This film took a very long time (more than a year) to produce. And it took not only a great deal of hard work, but also a lot of sadness to overcome to struggle to the finish line (for now). First I produced a multimedia package on this issue, available at michaelzhao.net/eDump. Then my colleagues at Asia Society in New York put me in front of the camera to talk about e-waste and my project. Their short video clip (via Youtube here) attracted a quarter million hits in a month.
I’ve always wanted to reproduce this project into a straight documentary, much longer than most Youtube videos of course. But the multimedia package took me nine months to finish and made me nearly sick of watching all the footage in the Final Cut Pro windows over and over again. Thus, I paused for a couple of months. But recently, I finally pulled my act together again and finished this 20-minute film, my first such major work.
Here is a 3.5-minute preview of the film. I hope that people outside China won’t just be concerned about the country’s unsafe pet food, toys and other cheap products. The full film is available at: michaelzhao.net.
