Unmade in China (2013)

Synopsis

UNMADE IN CHINA follows the experience of a Los Angeles filmmaker who finds himself in Xiamen, China trying to direct a thriller in Chinese, a language he doesn’t speak. He soon discovers that the old adage of making a film three times – in the writing, shooting, and editing – is in fact the opposite in China, where his film is “unmade” three times - in the writing, shooting, and editing - with each subsequent stage of the process even more excruciating and devastating than the one that came before it. Determined however to make his film happen -- even under the most adverse conditions -- the eager filmmaker can’t begin to imagine the complications of making a government-sanctioned film in Communist China. At first, compromises are decorously made and he ‘sells’ himself on the fact that these changes are mandated by cultural imperatives or differences delineating east and west. But this notion of civil disparity is quickly disabused as lead actors are clandestinely recast in the middle of the night, money is often withheld, and the filmmaker’s script is literally hijacked and rewritten without consultation. At last, the filmmaker takes a stand and boycotts the shoot, but even this is short lived. Fortunately, the Los Angeles filmmaker is accompanied for most of his Sino-Sisyphean journey by fellow documentarian and close friend, Tanner King Barklow who intimately records the absurd lunacy that prevails. What results is a hilarious documentary of an overeager American striving to make art in a Communist regime that is itself unsure of its identity. Aside from being a humorous, nuanced, and sometimes existential tale that documents the trials and tribulations of an Angeleno making a film in China, this is also a cautionary tale redolent with political resonance, about what compromises an artist suffers in order to make his or her work, and the measures he or she must take in order to sometimes right a wrong.

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