March 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Location: AMC Empire 25
With China’s ascendance, there has been an exponential surge of study-abroad students — Chinese students now account for over one-third to one-half of international secondary school students. Many are children of the new Chinese wealthy elite, whose parents found success in China’s economic rise of the last decades. Filmed over three years in China and the U.S., MAINELAND is a multi-layered coming-of-age tale that follows two affluent and cosmopolitan teenagers as they settle into a boarding school in blue-collar rural Maine. Part of the enormous wave of “parachute students” from China enrolling in U.S. private schools, bubbly, fun-loving Stella and introspective Harry come seeking a Western-style education, escape from the dreaded Chinese college entrance exam, and the promise of a Hollywood-style U.S. high school experience. In one sleepy Maine town, worlds collide as students fresh from China learn to navigate the muddy waters of this microcosmic global village.
Following the film, China Institute will host an on-stage conversation featuring director Miao Wang and the film’s protagonist, Harry Junru He.
Miao Wang (Director / Producer / Co-Editor) is an award-winning filmmaker who focuses on creative and cinematic documentaries that inspire cultural understanding and a humanist perspective of the world. Her critically-acclaimed documentary films Beijing Taxi (feature-length) and Yellow Ox Mountain have screened at over 70 international festivals and institutions such as SXSW and the Guggenheim Museum, with US theatrical release, and broadcast nationwide. Beijing Taxi is digitally distributed by Sundance Artist Services. She directed Made by China in America, a documentary short in Morgan Spurlock’s acclaimed We The Economy series. Wang is a recipient of grants and fellowship from the Sundance Institute, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the Tribeca Film Institute, Tribeca All Access, IFP Filmmaker’s Lab, Independent Film Week, Women Make Movies, and the Flaherty Film Seminar.