Icarus Films will be joining forces with dGenerate Films on Aug. 24 for the DVD debut of documentary filmmaker Jill Li’s Lost Course.
When all is lost and there is no hope, you fight back. That’s exactly what the villagers of the fishing community of Wukan did in 2011 when corrupt “officials” sized their land and sold it off to their friends. This was their livelihood, their future, their children’s future, so they did the unthinkable — the imaginable in Communist China — they took to the streets and protested.
It became an international incident and Jill Li was there to capture it all.
Her film is broken into two feature-length segments. The first is titled “Protests,” which gives the viewer the background of the events as they unfolded and shows how the villagers were able to organized — against all odds — and fight back.
After doing the unthinkable, Li takes the viewer into the second segment, which is titled “After Protests.” This part highlights a bittersweet end to the events at Wukan as winners and losers are sorted out … and things seem to drift back to “normal.” Imagine a large rock tossed into a pond, the splash, the ripples and then in time, the pond is placid once again.
Stunning, intimate and thoughtful, director Jill Li’s Lost Course is a peek between the curtain into what drives party officials in China … what gets their attention and what happens with politics at the local level.
Lost Course is presented in Mandarin with English subtitles.
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