Professor Weimin Zhang: Demolishing culture in modern China

COASTSIDER -- Chinese director Weimin Zhang grew up in a Hutong. She remembers it as a wonderful world where all the adults treated all the neighborhood kids as members of an extended family. She left to attend the Beijing Film Academy and to get her Master’s degree at Ohio University. While Zhang was away becoming a famous director the government tore down her Hutong home to make way for a modern high rise. It was a shock that got her to start work on a documentary about the Hutong way of life built around conversations with old beloved neighbors about what they love about their Hutong homes and what they will miss when they are all gone. Director Weimin Zhang will attend the screening and take questions from the audience. Long considered one of the standout film makers of China’s sixth generation of filmmakers, she holds degrees from both the Beijing Film Academy and the Ohio University film school. She has recently taken a post at the film school at San Francisco State.