Daniel Garber speaks with Sameer Farooq about his new documentary The Silk Road of Pop

Posted in China, Clash of Cultures, Cultural Mining, documentary, Islam, Music, Uncategorized, Xinjiang by CulturalMining.com on November 1, 2013

Sameer Farooq The Silk Road of Pop

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Most Chinese live in the eastern half of the country. Western China — places like Tibet, Gansu, Xinjiang — are sparsely populated, and traditionally the home of minority populations, people who are different from the Han Chinese.
One of these groups, the Uyghur — a central Asian, Muslim Turkic people — were once a dominant culture in vast Xinjiang.
But very recently, an influx of Han Chinese migrants have shifted the population balance away from this indigenous group. A fascinating new documentary called The Silk Road of Pop, premiering at Toronto’s Reel Asian Film Festival looks at how the Uyghur people and their music have fared in contemporary China.
The director is Nova Scotia native Sameer Farooq from Smoke Signal Projects. Sameer has a background in Cultural Anthropology and a deep familiarity with China and its peoples. He’s currently completing his MFA at RISD in Rhode Island.
In this interview Sameer explains more about the origins of Uyghur music, his own identification with that group, outside influences, hip hop, their future as a minority within China, the role of women in Uyghur music… and more!
silk road of pop
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Daniel Garber talks with JIA ZHANG-KE and ZHAO TAO about his new film TOUCH OF SIN

Posted in Corruption, Cultural Mining, Drama, Films We Like, Interview, Jeff Harris, Jia Zhangke, Movies, Uncategorized, violence, 中国电影 by CulturalMining.com on October 19, 2013

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Hi — This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

It’s contemporary China — people are facing abuse from their employers,  corrupt local politicians, gangsters… Life is a struggle, and anger just roils up inside, until it bursts forth, with alarming consequences.

In a series of linked stories, a fantastic new film from China treads new ground in Chinese cinema. It’s called A TOUCH OF SIN and played at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I spoke with director Jia Zhangke and his muse Zhao Tao on site during TIFF13. Jia is one of China’s best known contemporary filmmakers, who uses art to bring the underside of current issues to the forefront. Zhao is his lead a touch of sin_01_mediumactress and appears in many of his films.

Known for films like Platform, The World and Still Life, Jia Zhang-Ke’s newest one outdoes them all.

A Touch of Sin opens today in Toronto.

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