The Main Road: Chronicle of a Chinese Highway is a meditation on the current era of rapid urban development. Filmmaker and author Zhang Zanbo spent three years lurking in a highway construction site in his hometown in Hunan province where he made contact with migrant workers, contractors, construction supervisors, local villagers and officials engaged with a local construction company. With camera and pen, Zhang Zanbo tells the story of a village changed by the times, the murky truths of the construction industry, and the cost of the country's development. Zhang Zanbo and art critic Li Xianting share more about the lives of those documented.
Ticketing: Free
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14:00-15:35 Screening of The Main Road
15:35-17:00 Discussion
Zhang Zanbo (Filmmaker, Director)
Chinese independent filmmaker, director, screenwriter, Zhang Zanbo graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 2015. With dozens of published articles, Zhang works include Fallen from the Sky, A Song of Love, Maybe, and June.
Li Xianting (Art Critic)
Art critic, art theorist, editor, and curator
A highway is waiting to go through a quiet village in Hunan province, central China. Numbers of migrants workers, their lives spent on the road, come in like a tide, paying in blood and sweat to fill temporary positions. With their arrival, local villagers and peasants are forced to face land acquisition and house relocation. Connected through life, the workers and local villagers play out questions of morality, the hidden rules of road construction unveiled.
Director: Zhang Zanbo
Producer: Richard Liang
Genre: Documentary
Language: Mandarin and Hunan dialect
Year: 2015
Runtime: 95 mins.