One of the best kept secrets of the contemporary world is how the Chinese Party keeps its grip on power, and indeed how it governs. CHINESE MAYOR is the first film to shed some light on these mysteries. Set in Datong, by most counts the most polluted city in Northern China, it recounts the heroic efforts of Mayor Geng Yanbo to pull down the decaying Mao-era housing, creating a new cultural centre out of the rubble.
The film is shot behind the scenes, with astonishing access. Mayor Geng Yanbo is a Buddhism reader as well as a convinced communist, and it rapidly becomes clear that he faces a task sufficient proportions to daunt the hardiest activist. But he slogs on, overcoming bureaucratic latitude, the objections of his own family, who believe he is working himself to death, and the resistance of some Datongers, who seemed both bemused by the rubble surrounding them, and eager to get new apartments in the hastily thrown together developments rising from the dust.
“The film is itself a miracle,” says Nick Fraser of BBC STORYVILLE, which will air the film in Feb. “The filmmakers have caught the hectic change of China, and it often plays as a comedy. Along with scenes of disorientation, it’s possible to see how much the inhabitants rely on Mayor Geng Yanbo. No film to my knowledge offers the proposition that the Chinese Communist party in many ways operates like a traditional Western Party. As the film shows, elections are somewhat different. But the mayor is successful because he delivers. If he didn’t people wouldn’t take to the streets, demonstrating in his favour when he leaves. And the mayor is a magnificent, larger than life figure, driven, anxious, charming, quizzical. You may not want to visit Datong after watching this film, but you will feel you know much more about the new China.”
The film is shot behind the scenes, with astonishing access. Mayor Geng Yanbo is a Buddhism reader as well as a convinced communist, and it rapidly becomes clear that he faces a task sufficient proportions to daunt the hardiest activist. But he slogs on, overcoming bureaucratic latitude, the objections of his own family, who believe he is working himself to death, and the resistance of some Datongers, who seemed both bemused by the rubble surrounding them, and eager to get new apartments in the hastily thrown together developments rising from the dust.
“The film is itself a miracle,” says Nick Fraser of BBC STORYVILLE, which will air the film in Feb. “The filmmakers have caught the hectic change of China, and it often plays as a comedy. Along with scenes of disorientation, it’s possible to see how much the inhabitants rely on Mayor Geng Yanbo. No film to my knowledge offers the proposition that the Chinese Communist party in many ways operates like a traditional Western Party. As the film shows, elections are somewhat different. But the mayor is successful because he delivers. If he didn’t people wouldn’t take to the streets, demonstrating in his favour when he leaves. And the mayor is a magnificent, larger than life figure, driven, anxious, charming, quizzical. You may not want to visit Datong after watching this film, but you will feel you know much more about the new China.”