In 1985 Navroze Contractor, an award-winning Indian cinematographer, joins an international crew to make a groundbreaking film in China. Their focus: the dreams and aspirations of the country's young people. Given unprecedented access to the people and the country, the team sets about its work amidst the challenges this developing nation poses to a group of artists.
As he embarks on the three-month-long expedition – the film was shot between December 1985 and March 1986 – in what is to him a strange new land, Contractor is reminded of Joris Iven's words: ‘Be careful. China will eat you up.' The advice is prescient as Contractor. an ardent fan of Chinese history for more than two decades, encounters the everyday reality of Red China. Now he experiences everything from dealing with the infamous Chinese bureaucracy to eating snakes and witnesses the stirrings of a nation starting to claim its place as a world-power.
Part travelogue. part cultural study, part film history.
Dreams of the Dragon's Children provides an insightful and charming chronicle of daily life in China in the mid-1980s.
