“600″- My Film on Expat Foreigners Living in China

My film “600″ which I shot in Shanghai in 2007 has recently been accepted into some major U.S. and international film festivals after a short successful China festival 2007 showing(3 awards in 2 festivals). I’ll be heading to the following venues in the next month Austin Asian American Film Festival, Vancouver Asian American Film Festival, International Community Film Festival(can’t make this one, it’s in England). I’ve been wanting to share “600″ with CNreviews for the longest time, but post production with my 2nd film “Drowning” prevented me from having any free time to write. BUT!!!! I FINALLY have some time, so here it is:

Background: I spent my post-college years all over China acting in movies before ending up in Shanghai. While living in Shanghai, I also took a part time job at an English teaching company formerly known as TalkdaTalk as an events coordinator(flexible, easy, I loved it!). When I was free, I would also teach English there and hosted company events. During my time there, I met a lot of English teachers; people from all walks of life now living in Shanghai as expats. Besides the English teachers I met at TalkdaTalk, I also met a huge number of them during social and expat community events. Why teach English? The reason being English teachers are a hot commodity and the Chinese pay nice $$$ for a full time teacher. Full time English teachers are making the ranges of 10,000-15,000 RMB per month. Even though that doesn’t sound a lot to people here in the States, you have to consider the cheap living standards in China where you can eat a cheap meal for 7 rmb( $1), share an apartment for 2000 rmb ($300). To put things into perspective, most of my Chinese local friends all make between 2000rmb-5000 rmb per month (note: most have a college degree). For this reason, people come from all over the world to teach and party in Shanghai.

The film’s core: The core of “600″ is about the loneliness and struggles with identity of an American ex-pat living in Shanghai teaching English. I used the stories of many expat English teachers as inspiration in writing “600″. The main motivation behind this film being the crazy stories I hear from people talking about their lives and how they somehow ended up in Shanghai. When I was living in China, I felt this aura from all the expats that they were all lost(myself included), and was looking for something. This maybe the reason why most of the expats I knew had different jobs and was always trying to do different things. They all deeply loved Shanghai for the city’s energy and were drawn closely to it. In getting to know more and more of these people, I realized most of them were all looking for something in life that they hadn’t found in their previous existence. As expats of Shanghai, they all loved the city and culture initially and are having the best times there. But gradually, over time, the reality and problems begin setting in… and this is where our film begins…

The film”600″ is online and you can watch it for free HERE

(feel free to donate $$$ to support my next film)

In my next post, I will focus on the theme from “600″ and talk about

Living in China as an Expat

Don’t touch that dial!