Maineland Documentary Screening and Q&A with Director

The Carolina Asia Center at UNC Chapel Hill presents a screening of Maineland, a coming-of-age film about Chinese students enrolling in U.S. private schools.

Filmed over three years in China and the U.S., MAINELAND is a multi-layered coming-of-age tale that follows two affluent and cosmopolitan teenagers as they settle into a boarding school in blue-collar rural Maine. Part of the enormous wave of “parachute students” from China enrolling in U.S. private schools, bubbly, fun-loving Stella and introspective Harry come seeking a Western-style education, escape from the dreaded Chinese college entrance exam, and the promise of a Hollywood-style U.S. high school experience. As Stella and Harry’s fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, they ruminate on their experiences of alienation, culture clash, and personal identity, sharing new understandings and poignant discourses on home and country.

Miao Wang is a New York-based award-winning filmmaker and print and web designer. Born in Beijing, China just after the Cultural Revolution, Miao Wang grew up with the last remnants of premodernized Communist China. She immigrated to the United States in 1990.

Text and Picture from Carolina Asia Center