“The Warriors of Qiugang” is a documentary from Chinese-American filmmaker Ruby Yang, who with cinematographer Guan Xin and longtime collaborator Thomas Lennon, spent three years chronicling the struggle of a Chinese villages population to curb the pollution that was poisoning them in their homes, schools, and fields.
On Jan. 25, 2011, it was announced that Yang's documentary film has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short at the 83rd annual Oscar awards taking place Feb. 27, 2011.
According to the filmmakers, like many villages in China’s industrial heartland, Qiugang — a hamlet of nearly 1,900 people in Anhui province — has long suffered from runaway pollution from nearby factories. In Qiugang’s case, three major enterprises with little or no pollution controls churned out chemicals, pesticides, and dyes, turning the local river black, killing fish and wildlife, and filling the air with foul fumes that burned residents’ eyes and throats and sickened children.
The pollution from the Jiucailuo Chemical plant became so egregious that in 2007, Qiugang’s residents — working with a fledgling environmental group, Green Anhui — began to try to do something about it.
Yang and Lennon co-produced the project with support from Yale Environment 360. It is part of a trilogy of short films set in China — the first of which, “The Blood of Yingzhou District,” won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
The 39-minute video focuses on an unlikely hero — farmer Zhang Gongli, now almost 60, who leads the village’s fight to shut down the chemical plant. Soft-spoken and easy-going, but with a backbone of steel, Zhang — who has only a middle-school education — quickly learns how to use China’s more stringent federal environmental laws to put pressure on the factory owners and their cronies in local and regional government.
“We are sorry to be born in this place,” says Zhang, “but we had no choice. This was forced upon us.”
The camera follows Zhang as he deals with threats from local thugs, rallies his neighbors, and travels to Beijing, where he attends a heady meeting of China’s emerging environmental movement. Zhang — like so many other Chinese — finds himself plunged into a new and wholly unfamiliar world.
“I feel scared — I really don’t want to be a hero,” Zhang says as he rides the train to Beijing. “But the next generation will suffer. We risk our lives for their happiness.”
For more about the film go to: http://www.warriorsofqiugang.com/
SOURCE: YALE ENVIRONMENT 360
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