Chinese Film Presentation: "Nowhere to Call Home"
Nowhere to Call Home
Documentary film screening and Q&A with film director Jocelyn Ford
April 23, 5-7pm
Forum Hall, Palmer Commons
100 Washtenaw Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI
A documentary film by Jocelyn Ford.
Film screening followed by a Q&A with the director.
Filmed over three years in Beijing and Tibet; 89 minutes
Free and Open to the Public
Nowhere To Call Home tells the powerful story of Zanta, a Tibetan woman who moved to Beijing against the wishes of her in-laws so that her young son could get an education. "The film breaks down the sometimes romantic Shangri-La view that Westerners have of Tibet... and offers a shocking portrait of the outright racism... Tibetans face in Chinese parts of the country." The New York Times
SYNOPSIS: Widowed at 28, Tibetan farmer Zanta defies her tyrannical father-in-law and after her husband's death refuses to marry the family's only surviving son. When Zanta's in-laws won't let her seven-year-old go to school, she flees her village and heads to Beijing where she becomes a street vendor. Destitute and embattled by discrimination, Zanta inveigles a foreign customer into helping pay her boy's school fees. On a New Year's trip back to her village, Zanta's in-laws take her son hostage, drawing the unwitting American into the violent family feud. The two women forge a partnership to try to out-maneuver the in-laws, who according to tradition get the final say on their grandson.
Director: Jocelyn Ford, former Beijing and Tokyo bureau chief for the U.S. public radio show Marketplace, has been based in East Asia for three decades. During three years of filming Nowhere to Call Home, Jocelyn overcame restrictions on access to Tibetan communities to shine light on the complex choices facing Tibetan farmers living in contemporary China, and to lend new insights into the social fragility of the world's fastest rising power.
Nowhere for Call Home: For more information on the film and director, please access the above link.
Location: Forum Hall is located on the 4th floor of Palmer Commons in the central campus area of the University of Michigan. For floor plans and more information on the building, please click on the link below:
Map of Palmer Commons