My Village 2008

Now in her seventies, Shao Yuzhen has been making first-person documentaries about her home village of Shaziying (Beijing) since her selection for the China Villagers Documentary Project in 2005. The farmer, now locally well-known as the villager filmmaker, chronicles "all the bits and pieces of our everyday lives, since they, too, are part of my family's and my fellow villagers' life experiences." (Shao). Imbued with a remarkable sense of openness, her work is a form of activist journalism which seeks to challenge prejudice against the peasant class in contemporary China. From the opening shots, we come to recognise the intimacy which Shao's camera immediately forms with each of her fellow villagers, making good on her declaration that "this film is for my village!".