Artist: Fang di
The destination to promised land
Because my focus is on Chinese people migrating overseas, but migration is a worldwide issue, so in the course of my research I found this video by fang di, a documentary about African immigrants who have left their homes to come to a strange place, all striving for a better life, but where is happiness?
The artist has chosen three different individual perspectives to show the state of African migrants in Guangzhou in the last decade of the 21st century from different angles and directions. The film also allowed me to reflect on the roots ofthe phenomenonand its underlying causes.
It also made me think about how China and Africa are both “East” to the Western world, but within the “East” there is a more subtle structural discrimination. He uses ‘City of Hope’ as an irony, and the artist offers an alternative perspective on the realities of African migrants in China. I also liked the way he expressed himself throughout the film, using some bizarre collage editing techniques that cleverly interspersed the film with historical context without being out of place.
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