Film Screening: Guangzhou Dream Factory

Guangzhou, a.k.a. Canton, is southern China’s centuries-old trading port. Today the booming metropolis of 14 million is a mecca of mass consumption, its vast international trading centers crammed with every “Made in China” good imaginable. Every year more than half a million Africans travel to Guangzhou where they buy goods to sell back in Africa. Over time, some have chosen to stay, and for these Africans China looks like the new land of opportunity, a place where anything is possible. But is it?

 

Featuring a dynamic cast of men and women from Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, GUANGZHOU DREAM FACTORY weaves the stories of Africans chasing alluring, yet elusive, “Made in China” dreams into a compelling critique of 21st century global capitalism. Following a filmmaker’s journey from Ghana to China and back to Africa, GUANGZHOU DREAM FACTORY provides a rare glimpse of African aspirations in an age of endless outsourcing.

 

Christiane Badgley is a director and editor of award-winning documentaries and multimedia work. Christiane began her career in the San Francisco Bay Area where she was a frequent collaborator of acclaimed African American director, Marlon Riggs (she worked with him until his death in 1994, completing his last film, Black Is…Black Ain’t, posthumously). Guangzhou Dream Factory, Christiane’s latest documentary (with producing partner, Erica Marcus), was made with funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities and The National Endowment for the Arts.

 

Erica Marcus was one of the first Americans to study and work in China after normalization of relations between the United States and China (1979). She began her film career in the early 1980s working in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, she assisted the Cannes award winning filmmaker Hu Jin Quan (King Hu). Erica has since produced documentary films that have screened at numerous festivals including Sundance, Berlin and Locarno, and been broadcast on PBS and European TV networks.