“The World,” 25 April 2010, DVD. Set in a Bejing theme park, this slow-moving and depressing but very interesting Jiang Ke Zia study of the new China’s affect on workers. Cell phones and texting abounds in this new world of monorails, but the lives of people are vastly more tenuous than in earlier years. The theme park, a miniaturized world (who would have to go to France when the Eiffel Tower is in Bejing?) create a surreal aspect to the film with its comments on global consumption and fashion, the aping of the west, and the sweatshops and construction sites that allow people to make a living if they’re lucky enough to survive and keep their soul Women (in this case dancers and ‘showgirls’) fare particularly poorly in this new, capitalist China that has returned them to prostitutes in name or fact in oh so many cases. Russian women are part of this new, degraded gendered class when they come to China for work. Old and new coexist, the old often silently, along with the grotesqueness of a dancer seated on the wall of Notre Dame like the 50-ft woman with camels and the Sphinx around the corner. This is a very modern China with film very influenced by European existential isolation. Silence and beautiful shots on the road. See this one