Bringing King to China

Short Synopsis

This is the bittersweet story of a young American teacher in Beijing who tries to introduce the non-violent philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to China Jr. after learning that her father, a journalist in Iraq, has been killed by a suicide bomber.

Description/Treatment

Normal 0 0 1 71 405 Access 3 1 497 10.260 0 0 0  Bringing King to China is a documentary film about culture, race and human rights. The film brings Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of equality and peace to China—and then brings it back to the U.S. The feature-length documentary was inspired by a groundbreaking play, which was staged in Beijing in Mandarin with a Chinese cast and American Gospel singers. After two years of location shooting in China, India and the United States and a year of post-production, the film is almost finished.

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Bringing King to China is a film about a young woman’s star-crossed efforts to export the non-violent ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to China. The main character, an American Fulbright scholar in Beijing, majored in Asian and African-American history in college. Her improbable dream-- to counter the "culture of war" after 9/11 by using Chinese theater to show the world a “positive face of America”-- took shape after working at the King Institute at Stanford University. The story has been featured on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.phpstoryId=11330396), in The New York Times(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/world/asia/30beijing.html) and in The Los Angeles Times (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/22/entertainment/et-mlk22).The film goes behind the news to reveal a young woman's gritty cross-cultural struggle.

The protagonist is a fluent Mandarin speaker who grew up wanting to be a reporter, but the turmoil of the war after 9/11 and her struggle to stage the play eventually turn her away from journalism. By all appearances, she is successful in raising $200,000, hiring China’s most professional theater company and staging a play in Chinese with African American gospel singers. But back stage in Beijing her efforts to translate Dr. King's vision of global peace for a Chinese audience turn rocky in the face of cultural obstacles and soured relationships.

Within the main story is a daughter-father tale in which the protagonist must confront the changes her journalist father undergoes after covering the Iraq war. Her bittersweet journey to stage her play begins after worldwide protests fail to stop the Iraq invasion, when she learns (mistakenly) that her father has been been killed by a suicide bomber.

The coming of age film unfolds in the long run-up to opening night in Beijing as she finds a deeper, more complex Martin Luther King, Jr. than the I-Have-a-Dream figure celebrated in holiday parades and school recitations. The MLK she wants to bring to China is the anti-war King, a prophetic leader whom--she argues--became a threat when he went beyond civil rights to become an international force for peace. This is a side of Dr. King that she believes history has downplayed—a side she is determined to highlight in China. That viewpoint brings her into conflict with the play's director, who wants to focus on who killed King, not why he may have been killed.

The play is a critical hit, but the producer is forced to re-define success as she learns that language proficiency does not guarantee that different cultures will understand each other. She finally repairs a strained friendship with her beloved assistant in Beijing, while confronting her father with her belief that he is suffering from post-traumatic stress.

The film provides a lens to view the history of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of another society, challenging western viewers to wrestle with King's profound teachings about war and world poverty. In the end, the young American must face the contradictions of bringing "wisdom" to another culture.

 

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After broadcast on television, Bringing King to China will be distributed to schools, libraries and community centers with lesson plans to spark discussion.  Given the soon-to-be opened Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., new racial controversies in the USA and recent minority rights protests in China, Bringing King to China is timely. The filmmakers are seeking completion funds, and all contributions are tax-deductible. Please visit our donation page for more information.

 

Coverage of the forthcoming documentary film:

‘One Dream’ Meets ‘I Have a Dream’

Miller McCune (August 8, 2008)

Beijing Doc

Documentary Magazine (Spring 2008)