Film Review

[Anonymous]

I have added this documantary to my list of movies to be watched. I know the professor mentioned it several times during classs. This story reminds me of many of my student's life story. Many of my students would be able to relate to this story. Many of them are left behind in their native countries with their grandparents or other relatives to raise them while the parents immigrate to the U.S. to provide them with a better life. Thanks for sharing.

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Last Train Home Film Review
Nicholas S. D'Amico, Ph.D.
West Adams Prep High School

This film portrays the world's largest human migration of nearly 124 million people at the time of the Chinese New Year. Poor school children supplied the rural labor needed to support agriculture. From scenes of children sleeping on cottage factory floors
we are taken to visions of alienation, such as parents not knowing what to talk about or how to relate to their children. Children are raised by grandparents and disconnected from the parents that left the countryside for the cities to support them economically
The old and the young remain in the villages while the others struggle in factories in the cities for exporting goods around the world.
This generation gap manifests itself in a scene of domestic discord as a father and daughter squabble and come to blows over expectations for her to finish her high school education rather than drop out for a sewing job. With the 2008 Olympic Games held in China and the world-wide economic crisis as a back drop, this film by Lixin Fan won the San Francisco International Film Festival sometime just after its 2009 release. It poignantly incapsulates and combines concepts and images I saw in "People's Republic of Capitalism" it a very artful way.

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