China Heavyweight
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“To Cut Through the Stigma of Wuhan Being This ‘Virus City’ : Yung Chang on His Hot Docs-Premiering Wuhan Wuhan
I last interviewed Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight) before the TIFF premiere of 2019’s This Is Not a Movie, which follows the uncompromising humanitarian war correspondent Robert Fisk (who died just this past October) on his eternal mission to give the lie to bothsidesism. And while Chang’s latest doc Wuhan Wuhan – an on-the-ground account of life during lockdown from the perspective of several brave and traumatized frontline workers – might seem a breaking news departure, it’s actually very much in line with the multiple award-winning filmmaker’s character-first approach. Whether tackling issues of capitalist exploitation, controversial righteous journalism, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 29, 2021 -
“It’s About Pursuing ‘Truth’ and How Each Journalist Interprets That Word for the Rest of Us”: Yung Chang on His TIFF-Debuting This Is Not a Movie
Long a thorn in the establishment’s side, veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk has spent the past four-decades-plus reporting “subjectively” from frontlines the world over, most notably in the Middle East. An Arabic speaker, who interviewed Osama bin Laden three times before 9/11, Fisk has forever served “on the side of the suffering,” political implications be damned. Unsurprisingly, this has caused the Beirut-based Brit to become a controversial, if highly respected, figure, labeled both human rights advocate and terrorist sympathizer alike. Now in his seventies and still dodging bullets, both literally and figuratively, Fisk continues to file columns for The Independent […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 9, 2019 -
“CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT” RINGS IN SUNDANCE’S YEAR OF THE DRAGON
The Year of the Dragon calls for boldness, passion and power. What better way for Sundance to usher in the new year than a dragon dance up and down the aisles of the Yarrow Theatre? Cavorting to drums and cymbals, the dragons were introducing the world premiere of the documentary, China Heavyweight. China Heavyweight is the second feature-length doc from Montreal’s Yung Chang, who helmed the award-winning Up The Yangtze. Chang follows coach Qi Moxiang and his two boxers, Zongli He and Yunfei Miao, in southwestern China as they train for the championships. The area they come from is poor, […]
by Allan Tong on Jan 27, 2012
