“I didn’t want to make a poverty porn,” says Shanghai-born, Vancouver-residing filmmaker Johnny Ma about his first feature, Old Stone, released this fall by Zeitgeist. “I felt if I can’t bring myself to really understand what it is like to live in this town and environment, then I don’t deserve to make this film.” That extra degree of empathy and social insight was especially needed for Old Stone, which thrusts viewers into a contemporary China where motorists are faced with a stunning dilemma. Drivers who strike pedestrians are forced to shoulder these pedestrians’ related lifetime medical expenses. If the pedestrian […]