PMA Films

Followed by Q&A with Nancy Riley, Chair of the Department of Sociology, Bowdoin College

PMA Films and the Chinese & American Friendship Association of Maine are proud to present a weekend featuring some of the most celebrated arthouse films from China in a rare chance to see them on a big screen.

PMA Films and the Chinese & American Friendship Association of Maine are proud to present a weekend featuring some of the most celebrated arthouse films from China in a rare chance to see them on a big screen. The movies include Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018), Shadow (2018), Ash Is Purest White (2018), and One Child Nation (2019). Not rated. Various running times. In Chinese and other languages with subtitles.

China’s One Child Policy, the extreme population control measure that made it illegal for couples to have more than one child, may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its brutal enforcement is only just beginning. From award-winning documentarian Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) and Jialing Zhang, the sweeping One Child Nation explores the ripple effect of this devastating social experiment, uncovering one shocking human rights violation after another - from abandoned newborns, to forced sterilizations and abortions, and government abductions. Wang digs fearlessly into her own personal life, weaving her experience as a new mother and the firsthand accounts of her family members into archival propaganda material and testimony from victims and perpetrators alike, yielding a revelatory and essential record of this chilling, unprecedented moment in human civilization. One Child Nation is a stunning, nuanced indictment of the mindset that prioritizes national agenda over human life, and serves as a first-of-its-kind oral history of this collective tragedy - bearing witness to the truth as China has already begun to erase the horrors of its “population war” from public record and memory.

Followed by Q&A with Nancy Riley, Chair of the Department of Sociology, Bowdoin College

Directed by: Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang
Run time: 89 min
Rated: NR
In Mandarin with English subtitles