Gathering Dust
- added June 20, 2007
- 2 responses
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- cam82
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Gathering Dust is a collection of fleeting portraits of migrants in Beijing. It visits a cleaner, a migrant school teacher, street vendors, sex workers and migrant children. These migrants come from poor rural areas, and when in Beijing, live at the fringes of urban society. Yet they perform many of the menial jobs without which, Beijings and Chinas astonishing development would not be possible. We wanted to capture these stories on film and spent 3 weeks in Beijing shooting the project. It wasnt always easy, as migration is a sensitive subject. We found many closed doors, especially with the Olympics only one year away. But in the end, we wanted to focus on personal stories of migrating to Beijing from different parts of China. Official statistics place the number of internal migrants over 130 million: 10% of Chinas entire population. Today, they make up more than 40% of the urban workforce, and being largely unskilled labourers, and perform menial tasks such as rubbish collection and construction. Despite their large numbers, internal migrants are strongly disenfranchised compared to urban residents. Chinas household registration system (hukou) ties government services to native place and occupation. Poor migrants are prevented from accessing social services in urban areas, such as subsidized housing, free education and pensions. Living conditions are often cramped, and diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis spread easily. In 2006, 80% of new HIV cases reported in Beijing were migrant workers. Children inherit the hukou from their parents, and without government education, they have little chance on improving their social status. Annual school fees in Beijing exceed the income of some construction workers. Roughly half of migrant children therefore cannot attend school, and nearly 10% are forced to drop out. There are cheaper migrant schools. But teaching is often sub-standard, and diplomas are largely unrecognized by state education authorities.
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So many stories.I'd love to hear more.migrant workers have it so hard thanks for getting the word out.
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Hey there- thanks for submitting!
I think this piece is very interesting and you approach it nicely - I like the idea of 'fleeting portraits'. You also get some interesting characters. It has potential and would do well with perhaps a tighter edit and those facts at the end placed up front/earlier or interespersed where relevent in the film.
In terms of filming, perhap I would have a filmed a little bit more observationally and asked them questions that they could expand on . I make a point of never asking questions where people can say yes, no or any other one word answers. It means you have more to play with in the edit and really makes people answer more fully.
Good work though and a nice way to present this very interesting information. I hadn't even thought about what would happen after th euphoria of the Olympics.
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