12/02/2003 - Documentary-maker Li Yang's dispassionate look at the violent arrival of capitalism in China. A Sino-German co-production

It is clear right from the get-go that Li Yang is a documentary-maker. His directorial feature film, Mang Ying (Blind Shaft), was presented today, 12 February, in competition at the Berlinale. Yang graduated from a German film school, the Arts Academy of Cologne, and this film is a dispassionate look at the contradictions experienced by China in recent years.
The two protagonists, miners and mercenaries, are the instruments Yang uses to portray the changes to Chinese society, and the generalised loss of its cultural identity in the violent journey towards western-style capitalism.

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This is how the director explained the realism of the plot: “I did not add any extra drama or melodramatic situations. The advent of privatised mines was greeted as a dream come true for many, but soon revealed itself to be a nightmare for thousands of mine workers.”
The current status of our traditional values is another subject that is close to Li Yang’s heart: “I painted a picture of contemporary Chinese society and the ways in which it has been damaged by the arrival of new values, with occasionally positive but largely very negative consequences.”
Mang Ying is a Sino-German co-production by Bronze Age Films and Berlin’s Film Workshop and will be distributed by the Film Library of Los Angeles.

(Translated from Italian)