Color/163min/DV/2008
By: Zha Xiaoyuan
E-mail: chaxiaoyuan#yahoo.com.cn

Program Note:
Lao Ma is a traditional rug-weaver living in Xihaigu, an area renowned as “the poorest place around.” The three generations in their family face a life of perpetual poverty.
The region has been struck by a prolonged drought. There is no harvest and water must be bought from neighboring regions. The family is forced to spread out in search of work harvesting facai moss or working in coal mines. Lao Ma is further burdened by the loans he took out to pay for his son’s marriage. As his grandchild’s delivery date approaches and his daughter-in-law faces complications, they can only rely on fate.

Director:
For many years had bad been unable to get rid of the image of people huddled in earth-colored blankets on hand carts and carrying blackened pots hanging from sticks—the facai pickers. I wondered where they came from, where they were going, how they lived and saw themselves, so I went to their home to teach at a local school for a year. That is how I met and befriended Lao Ma and many other facai pickers.

Zha Xiaoyuan (b.1957. Sichuan)
Zha Xiaoyuan worked for ten years as an engineer for the Ningxia Bureau of Posts and Telecommunication and twelve years as an entrepreneur before volunteering to teach in Jiudao, a small village in Ningxia in 2004 with the intent of making a film. Completed in 2008, Lao Ma and His Family is the outcome of his yearlong stay among the villagers.

Filmography：
Lao Ma and His Family (“Zhanjiang Lao Ma yi jia”)2008
Authentic (“Gui zhen”)2008