Tie Xi Qu: West of Tracks

Screen
03/27 9:00 1 hall

Filmed over a two-year period in the Tie Xi industrial district, one of the hardest-hit areas of northeastern China's "rust belt", West of Tracks explores the lives, loves, livelihoods, aspirations and frustrations of Chinese factory workers and their families. The film is a powerful commentary on the ways in which China's rush to modernity - reform and restructuring, factory bankruptcies and closures, the demolition and relocation of old neighborhoods, and the complex and changing relationship between state-owned companies and their employees - has affected working class families in China.

Part I: Rust

Rust documents the steady decline of three economically troubled factories in Tie Xi District. Workers in the Shenyang Smelting Factory - already working under dangerous conditions, sick with lead poisoning, faced with constant raw materials shortages and rumors of impending bankruptcy - are well aware that the factory's days are numbered. Facing a depressing and uncertain future, the idled workers spend their days playing Chinese chess, drinking, fighting, scheming ways to make some extra cash and awaiting the inevitable: the final closure of the factory where some of them have worked for decades. Not far away, the Shenyang Electrical Cable Factory is experiencing similar difficulties. Most of the regular workers have already been laid off, leaving only a skeleton staff of mid-level cadres to look after the factory. At a Chinese New Year's dinner, the managers speak frankly about the enormous difficulties they will face in trying to privatize the factory. When the cable factory cannot manage to pay its electric bills, it is forced to shut down for the winter. The staffers return in the spring only to find their offices frozen solid - a leak has left the floor covered with a half meter of ice. A third factory, the Shenyang Sheet Metal Factory, has been trying unsuccessfully for three years to file for bankruptcy, only to be turned down time and time again by a city government that fears exceeding its maximum annual bankruptcy "quota". As the pressure builds, workers begin dismantling sheet metal equipment to be sold at auction, scavengers comb every inch of the factory grounds for bits of scrap metal, and the factory is rocked by a demonstration held by retired factory workers demanding their unpaid pensions.

Part II: Remnants

Remnants follows a group of Chinese teens living in Tie Xi District worker housing. While the adults in the neighborhood worry about factory closures, layoffs and financial pressures, the teens are preoccupied with their own lives and concerns: Seventeen-year-old Bobo is busy chasing after Nana, a girl from the neighborhood who won't give him the time of day; seventeen-year-old Chi Ying and her boyfriend Yi Xiu find their relationship imperiled by their constant bickering; eighteen-year-old Wang Zhen busily scribbles angst-filled love letters to a girl he likes, only to be mocked by his friends; eighteen-year-old Qu Jian, living with relatives after his parents' divorce, does his best to track down his absent mother while helping to support his family with piece-work packaging chopsticks; and seventeen-year-old Ren Huan is an orphan who finds himself very much alone in the world. When the authorities announce that the neighborhood in which they live is going to be demolished, the teens are forced to make some difficult choices and begin thinking seriously about their futures. Meanwhile, many of the neighborhood residents - unhappy with the tiny apartments given to them as compensation - refuse to move from their old homes. As winter snowstorms arrive and developers begin demolishing the neighborhood, the remaining residents continue their passive resistance, braving freezing temperatures, water and power outages, and a variety of intimidation tactics designed to force them out of their homes.

Rails examines the decline of the old freight railway that links the factories of the Tie Xi District. The railway workers, once kept busy shipping raw materials and finished goods to and from the factories, now find themselves with very little to do but while away their days with games of Chinese chess and other small diversions. There are also a number of homeless individuals with no real jobs or responsibilities, living on the fringes of society, who have come to rely on what they can beg, borrow or scavenge from the railway. Middle-aged Du Xiyun and his son Du Yang are two such "railway dependents" making a marginal living scavenging raw materials and doing a variety of odd jobs for railway staff. But when the railway management institutes a crackdown designed to drive off the scavengers, Du Xiyun is arrested by the police and charged with stealing coal. Soon after he is released, he and his son disappear from the district, while life goes on as usual for the railway workers. When Du Xiyun finally does reappear a year later, he seems to have made a new life for himself.

WANG BING
Wang Bing was born in 1967 in Jingyang county, Shaanxi province.
1992 - BA in photography at the Luxun Arts University of Shenyang, Liaoning
1995 - Beijing Film Academy, cinematography department.
1998 - Starts to work as an independent filmmaker and director.
1999 - Cameraman for the independent feature film "Distortion."
1999 - Starts to shoot, direct and produce his first documentary West of Tracks in Shenyang, Liaoning province. Shooting lasted until the end of 2001.

Filmography
2002 West of Tracks documentary film (300 minutes)
selected at the 2002 "International Forum" of the Berlin Film Festival, Germany