Description
For more than twenty years, tons and tons of metallic and electronic waste from Japan, USA, Australia but also from Europe and other countries was transported to a Chinese town called Fengjiang, in the south of Shanghai. Heaps of metal of all kinds began to form disturbing reliefs within the townscape. Around 50000 migrant workers, avoiding the living conditions of the western poor regions of China, formed a real army to dismantle these metallic wastes. These “green soldiers ” decompose, cut, split and recycle, with the most rudimentary means, almost 2 million tons of garbage every year. The whole city seems to be given rhythm by this relentless work and the noise seems to become blurred only in the dark night Â… Allowing us to live this experience on the inside, the director accompanies Han ZHANG and Qiuxia JING’s family in their daily life, which, really, seems to be a real arm wrestling with their life. Their sighs and anxieties change nothing. To remain and assume the minimum material of theirs, they work hard, bear an incredible precariousness and risk their own health because of the simply unacceptable working conditions. During this time, the fragments of metals, which look like strangely ours, continue to accumulate, and send back to us a deeply moving image of our consumer society.
