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Social issues documented for posterity

The first CNEXT Documentary Film Festival presents eight works from around the world that deal with money. PHOTO: COURTESY OF CNEXT

Chinese Next, or CNEXT, is a non-profit organization established last year to realize a project envisioned by the founder of sina.com, Ben Tsiang (蔣顯斌), and Taiwanese directors Hsu Hsiao-ming (徐小明) and Chen Kun-hou (陳坤厚).

The aim: to systematically record the evolution of the fast-changing Chinese-speaking societies through visual, audio and written documentation as cultural memoirs for future generations. The project's first fruits are 10 documentary films and other works of art produced in collaboration with CNEXT.

The first year of the grand scheme has seen the completion of eight documentaries from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China that describe the role of money in Chinese-speaking societies around the world. Tonight at Eslite Bookstore, Dunnan Branch, the first CNEXT Theme Documentary Film Festival will begin screening these films.

An entry at the Venice Film Festival's Orizzonti competition section this year, Umbrella … (傘…) is a sober observational documentary on the lives of workers, peasants, soldiers, students and merchants under the shadow of China's economic miracle. With no narration or dialogue, the film uses images to portray the undeprivileged who become invisible as society as a whole gets richer.

Festival Notes WHAT: CNEXT Documentary Film Festival (開眼˙見錢 - CNEXT主題紀錄片影展) WHEN: Today through Oct. 12 WHERE: Dunnan Eslite Bookstore (誠品敦南B2藝文空間), B2, 245 Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei (台北市敦化南路一段245號B2). Entry: Film screenings are free. For more information, visit www.cnex.org.tw

Duckweed (浮萍), on the other hand, features a Chinese entrepreneur named Wu Yu (吳宇). Like many of the newly rich in Shenzhen, Wu quickly amassed a fortune through smuggling and unregulated stock and property transactions. Eager to seek approval as a scholar, rather than as a profit-driven businessman, Wu invests in films and opens the city's first "clean" KTV - no hostesses or sex workers. Both ventures fail to give Wu the credibility he so anxiously seeks.

In a drunken stupor, Wu turns to the camera and says to the director: "Now I'm rich, I have no roots. I float in Shenzhen, just like duckweed."

My Last Secret follows the life of a grandmother in her nineties living with her carer, in her sixties, in Suzhou. In her will, the grandmother bequeaths all her money to a local university, a fact she keeps secret from her family.

The film festival gives local audiences a rare chance to see groundbreaking filmmaking in China. "There are only a handful of independent filmmakers in China making documentaries and even those directors hesitate to criticize the Chinese government," festival director Wu Fan (吳凡) said.

More than a dozen award-winning documentaries from Germany, Netherlands, Australia, India, Norway South Korea, Sweden and the US will be screened along with the CNEX films.

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