It’s always tough picking out which movies to watch when the Vancouver International Film Festival rolls along. There are always so many movies to watch, and so little time and money to go out and see them. Being my geeky self, I watched Waking the Green Tiger last weekend. China, Mao, new green movement: those key words were enough to make me commit an hour and a half to watching a documentary – films I’m never usually the biggest fan of.
Mao’s Great Leap Forward involved killing off sparrows, reclaiming land, wiping out forests and flattening out mountains in the name of progress. It was a success to conquer nature and extract its bounty. Archival footage of workers happily scaring off sparrows and passing on sacks of soil were shown, reflecting a sense of solidarity in the hope of pushing the nation into development. VIFF audiences are always more engaged and responsive compared to regular moviegoers, and everyone chuckled and smirked in retrospect. Then I noticed deep, troubled breaths as footage of recycling scavengers picked through the garbage beside a mountain that was once their farmland, before the government built dams over it.
The film focused mostly on social justice and land tenure issues for the farmers along the rivers, who were in danger of losing their land to the construction of hydroelectric dams. The footage was very emotionally charged with farmers fighting for their land, triggering a wave of interest for the cause of the local environmental movements. I had hoped that the film would spend a little more time digging into the contentious issues it touched on, namely:
- How was the Great Leap Forward any different from what had happened in the Industrial Revolution?
- One of the officials interviewed said, “Did Mao have bad intentions? No.” I most definitely agree. The struggle between development and environmental degradation is so much more tense when you’re living in dire circumstances.
- Mistakes were made by Mao and felt by the people who were tasked to finish the job. What could be the mistakes that we are making now, as we try to rectify the wrongs we committed in the past?
I’ve been toying around with the idea of emotional attachment and ownership to the motherland and its people, and how, as immigrants in a foreign land, we lack a certain degree of solidarity with the new land we inhabit and its people. How can we live in Vancouver, a city unlike most of the ones we come from, bursting with tree-lined streets, random patches of forests throughout the city and among the freshest water and air available in the world, and still be cognizant of the environmental degradation that seems so far removed from the reality of our daily lives?
Waking the Green Tiger is showing at Empire Granville on Friday, October 7th at 9:30pm, and on Tuesday, October 11th at 12:20pm. For more information, visit: VIFF: Waking the Green Tiger
For further reading on General Mao’s development agenda and its effects on the environment, check out Mao’s War Against Nature by Judith Shapiro.
For images of recycling depots and rural development in China, watch Manufactured Landscapes by Edward Burtynsky, or view the photo series on Recycling and the Three Gorges Dam on his website.
by Nicole Ignacio
