Editor's foreword: "Looking China" International Youth Film Project is co-organized by the Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture (AICCC), Beijing Normal University and Huilin Foundation, which aims to showcase the contrasting simplicity and glamour, the antiquity and fashion of China through unique perspectives of young foreign film makers.
As of the year 2016, 101 students from 25 countries were invited to participate in the project. They were stationed in 13 municipality, provinces and autonomous regions here in China. Every filmmaker has worked out a 10-minute short film about Chinese culture around the topic of “ethnic minority”.
The film, Flight of the Fisherman, directed by Lian Morrisson, highlights the increasingly lonely life of fishermen. Fishing villages in China are vanishing, as the young people flee their hometowns in search of better job opportunities elsewhere.
77-year-old Huang Yuechang talks about his life, career and family. He lives in an isolated fishing village and chooses a method of fishing that’s unique and apparently, not so profitable.
He fishes with the cormorant bird, which he trains and after the birds get too old, Huang places them in a bird retirement home. He refuses to kill and eat them, since they had worked so hard.
Accordingly, he faces rising production costs, since he must feed his birds at the retirement home with the fish he caught daily.
Nonetheless, Huang has captured global fame after a photograph of him fishing with his cormorant fishing crew was printed in National Geographic magazine.
For many years, he lived in solitude, but with new-found fame he's often visited by people and journalists from all over the world to interview him.
Unfortunately, his son does not wish to follow him in his career footsteps. Huang is saddened by the decision, but he respects his son's wish to pursue a different lifestyle.
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