http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2009/chinaearthquake/(L-R) Film Producer Diana Dai, UOIT President Ron Bordessa, Professor Liqun Cao, Associate Professor Phil Shon, Dr. Helen Wu, University of Toronto and Professor Tony Chan.
Nearly 80,000 people were killed in the earthquake that devastated China’s Sichuan province on May 12, 2008. Lives and livelihoods, homes and villages were torn apart in seconds.Chinese reporters
had hurried to the scene and filed live and uncensored reports. Their stories of unimaginable devastation
unleashed an outpouring of international public support and sympathy. A year after the earthquake, what became of the people who survived?
A team from CBC Television’s award-winning Documentary Unit traveled to Sichuan in
search of the people whose stories so inspired the world. China’s Earthquake: The People in the Pictures captures tales of incredible heroism and heartbreak. The film also explores whether the new image
China presented to the rest of the world continued once the cameras moved on.
Viewers will meet Li Yue, a school girl who believed she was born to be a ballerina, but whose life was irrevocably changed after the earthquake when she witnessed many of her classmates die in
front of her. Nine-year-old Lin Hao became a “Little Hero” in China, but his newfound celebrity has put a terrible strain on his family.
And what of the Chinese journalists who were free for a time to report what they saw? One young reporter now finds herself the subject of controversy as people ask whether her desire to tell the story of a
trucker trapped in the rubble ultimately imperiled his life? Perhaps one of the most enduring images of the earthquake was of a communist party official on his knees begging the parents of dead schoolchildren to
stop their protest as they scream at him in anger. Did he follow through on his promises and did anything change for those parents?
China’s Earthquake: The People in the Pictures goes beyond the headlines to bring viewers tales of endurance and hope, of sorrow and rage, of life extinguished and life reborn.
