Of Philosophy And Documentaries

There's not a lot to update on except to say that I went to Shanghai for 5 days. It was fun - Shanghai is like the New York City of China. Tall buildings, Westernized commodities, and a lot of people from all over. A lot of people there speak English, so it's not very hard to get around. I checked out a couple of cool places (Shanghai Museum, the Bundt, Museum of Sex Culture, the local market, etc.) but most of my time was spent just wandering around the city and taking it all in. Good times.

I've started my class on Chinese Philosophy, which is fascinating. Chinese culture and belief structures have been strongly influenced by 3 main ideologies: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. The three have kind of blended together over thousands of years so what you have now is kind of a mish-mash hybrid cultural philosophy, and one that has also been significantly influenced by things like feudal society as well as the rise of Communism. It's really quite fascinating, particularly when one compares Chinese philosophy with a more Western religious tradition. There are actually quite a number of broad similarities - for example, when the Jesuits first arrived in China and began to preach Christianity, it was thought by many to just be another strand of Buddhism.

I have begun work on my documentary about what happened at the airport in Kunming. It's slow going. I've discovered that making a structured, logical narrative out of a bunch of random footage and interviews is easier said than done. My goal is to have a very rough cut finished by December 13 to present to everyone here, but I'm positive that I will be working on this well into next year. There are so many different themes and concepts to develop (some of them unexpected) that it is going to take some time to find the patterns and decide which are worth pursuing. I definitely won't be able to focus on everything, or instead of a documentary I'll end up with a jumbled mess of ideas and tangents that don't really go anywhere. I still have a few professors to interview, as well as some students who were there at the airport. I'm also trying to track down two of the Chinese passengers to see if they're in Beijing and would be willing to be interviewed, and am going to try and contact the Ministry of Transportation to see if they would like to officially comment on what happened. Also, this project is potentially something that could be submitted to film festivals and the like, so I'm having to think about all that involves as well - proper sound and color correction, forms of consent, etc. The film is still very much in its early stages, though, and a lot how the final project turns out and where it potentially goes will be determined by what I'm able to accomplish within the next few weeks. I'm trying not to get too stressed about it. Wish me luck.