Domenica 11 novembre ore 19.45

IL NOSTRO CANTO 我的诗篇

di Xiaoyu Qin e Feiyue Wu (Cina 2017, 96′, v.o. sottotitoli in italiano)

Dalle fabbriche di vestiti alla catena di montaggio della Apple, alla profondità delle miniere: cinque lavoratori cinesi trovano nella poesia la forza per sostenere il peso delle loro difficili esistenze. Con le loro composizioni, ricche di dignità e amore, riescono a infrangere il muro del silenzio e a raccontare le storie, le emozioni, le speranze e la disperazione dei milioni e milioni di lavoratori che ogni giorno lottano per trovare il loro posto nella società.
Serata a a cura di Marina Chiarioni e Markus Nikel per LUCI DALLA CINA, in attesa del festival che si terrà a metà novembre.

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The film concerns poets in Southern China who, while enduring arduous, sometimes hazardous conditions in working-class occupations, preserve their spirits with verse. Its inspiration is Xu Lizhi, the 24-year-old poet and laborer at a Foxconn electronics factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, who leapt to his death in 2014. Mr. Xu was one of the countless workers from the countryside who travel to China’s growing cities seeking employment, only to be eaten alive by the tedious, pitiless demands of industry.

The film examines four living poets, some writing pseudonymously. The young Blackbird (whose real name is Wu Niaoniao) attends a job fair and performs at a reading with other worker-poets. Lucky Chen (Chen Nianxi), a demolitions expert, risks his life daily underground while tending a paralyzed father and aging mother living in rural squalor. Old Coalmine (Lao Jing), a coal miner for 25 years, writes of “ghosts between coal seams and rock crevices.” In her poem “Sundress,” Dawn (Wu Xia), 33, a seamstress since she was 14, considers the affluent woman who will enjoy the fruits of her labor amid wealth Ms. Wu will never know.

With arresting images, The Qin Xiaoyu and Wu Feiyue documentary powerfully addresses China’s moral crisis in the wake of economic prosperity. Today, “if you don’t have money or power, it’s really hard,” says Xu Lizhi’s father. Especially if you’re working the line.