MOVIE • 1999

Beijing Cotton-Fluffer

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A young man has left his home village in Hunan Province for Beijing, to make a living fluffing cotton of old quilts and cushions. He lives in a makeshift roadside shack and waits for customers to arrive. The filmmaker, a student at the Beijing Film Academy, befriends the young migrant and begins to record his daily life. The video shows him in his frustration and loneliness at his destitute life in the big city. An old hometown friend, now a college student, is not terribly happy to meet him again. Poverty and power relations within his family limit his ambitions and memories of an old girlfriend leave him confused.