Description
RECOMMENDATION: Discretionary grant of $10,000 to Raymar Educational Films, Inc. to support outreach efforts for Guangzhou Dream Factory , a documentary film about Africans in China
This request came to us from Erica Marcus, whom I got to know through a prior grant to Link Media. Documentary film and television are core to her interests and professional activities, and she has a China background. You’ll note in the proposal that she interviewed Beth Moore many years ago for a documentary on missionaries in China. Her partner on Guangzhou Dream Factory is Christiane Badgley, a journalist who has worked in Africa for many years.
Although our Asia Program does not regularly support stand-alone documentary film projects, I’d like to make the case for this one. With its focus on China-Africa, the project is in keeping with our interest in supporting efforts that examine China beyond the framework of U.S.-China relations. The film explores a topic (the African community in Guangzhou) that is not well known. Guangzhou Dream Factory was made with funding from the NEH. Our grant would thus not cover production costs; rather, it would assist with dissemination, enabling Marcus and Badgley to participate in film screenings and related discussion at universities and other cultural institutions in the U.S. and China, and possibly Africa, and at film festivals. For this purpose, a portion of the funds would be used for the creation of a multi-language DVD (subtitles in English, Chinese, French). The proposal envisions a Phase II, which I do not contemplate funding.
The project complements and furthers other work we have funded, particularly two grants, awarded in 2013 and 2015, to the Social Science Research Council for a research initiative on China-Africa relations. A primary driver for the SSRC initiative was the fact that relatively little knowledge sharing or coordination had existed among scholars, policymakers, and those in the non-governmental sector involved with China-Africa issues, in part because the work crosses so many disciplinary, geographic and linguistic boundaries. In one component of the initiative, SSRC helped incubate the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network (CA/AC Network), previously a loosely affiliated group of scholars, journalists and practitioners working on this topic.
After receiving Marcus’ inquiry, I reached out to Yoon Jung Park, Executive Director of the CA/AC Network and an adjunct professor in the African Studies Program at Georgetown University, for an assessment of the film. She replied, “I was actually one of the consultants on Erica & Christiane’s film and I put them in touch with many of the scholars & researchers currently working on Africans in China, who in turn helped them to identify several of the people they follow through the film. I’ve also screened it in my China/Africa class at Georgetown last year (and plan to do the same again, next month) and helped to organize a public screening at SAIS last December, as a side event to the African Studies conference. It would be great to see it get a wider audience as there are few films currently available that really speak to the complexities and nuances of China-Africa engagements, especially on a more human scale.”
Marcus provided me a link to the film: https://vimeo.com/212996150 , Password: GZDF-25-04. As I watched it, I couldn’t help thinking about Quanzhou, a major trading port in southern China dating to the 6 th century. A stop along the maritime Silk Road, it welcomed traders from many parts of the world, including the Arabian Peninsula and Africa. Once again, China beckons as a land of opportunity. This film has an interesting story to tell.
