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THE VERSE OF US

Documentary - Completed 2017

Chinese workers gain their Dignity thanks to their daily Poetry

- Year of production
- 2017
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- CHINA
- Languages
- CHINESE, FRENCH, GERMAN, ENGLISH, ITALIAN
- Budget
- 3 - 5 M$
- Duration
- 98 mn
- Synopsis
- A portfolio of portraits of five citizens who could be any of the 350 million workers in China: An assembly line worker in an Apple factory who commits suicide at the young age of 24 -leaving behind 200 poems of despair: “I swallowed an iron moon…..”-; a guileless lathe operator who is rebuffed at every turn, living in the world of his poetry; a female clothing factory worker who lives in poverty but writes poetry rich in dignity and love; a coal miner who works deep in the earth year round, trying to contact and make peace through his poetry with the spirits of his dead coworkers; and a goldmine demolitions worker who blasts rocks to support his family, while writing poetry to carry the weight of his fury and the celebrate the lightness of his affections: “My body carries three tons of dynamite….”
  
  Using poetry as a tool to chip away at the ice of silence, they express their hidden life stories and experiences of people living at the bottom of the society. This is one unsung story behind the Chinese economic miracle, and a mournful tale of global capitalism.