ACF 1202: BEIJING BESIEGED BY WASTE at Asia Society NY

Beijing Besieged by Waste (2011). (dGenerate Films)

  Beijing Besieged by Waste

Directed by WANG Jiuliang

China, 2011, 72 minutes, Digibeta, English Subtitles

When: Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 3:00 PM

Where: Asian Society

725 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10021

Asia Society NY's Visions of a New China documentary film series concludes this coming Saturday afternoon with this recently and timely look at the impact of waste on Beijing's environments.



Synopsis: With a population of about 20 million, the growing city of Beijing produces 30,000 tons of waste each day. Photographer/filmmaker Wang Jiuliang traveled around the city and visited 460 legal and illegal landfills from 2008 to 2010 to document the collection of garbage and excrement, the environmental calamity and the life cycles around these landfills, which include scavengers building a precarious livelihood, green spaces forming on top of waste, and livestock being fed trash. An informative and alarming portrait of urban ecology, the film has earned keen Chinese media coverage and the attention of government officials.

Interview with director WANG Jiuliang:

WANG Jiuliang was born in Anqiu, Shandong Province in 1976. He is a graduate of the Cinema-Television School at Communication University of China. Wang is also a photographer. Beijing Besieged by Waste accompanies a larger photography project.

Tickets here.

The Visions of a New China film series was curated by La Frances Hui and is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. Additional support is provided by the Center on U.S.-China Relations and New York State Council on the Arts.