Film graduate’s China Heavyweight packs a punch

Award-winning Montreal filmmaker and alumnus Yung Chang’s new documentary China Heavyweight recently received standing ovations at the famed Sundance Film Festival and Hot Docs, the Canadian international documentary film festival.

Like his prize-winning 2007 film Up the Yangtze, Chang’s new film explores China in transition, this time through a boxing coach who recruits rural teens and transforms them into champions in the ring. Professional Western-style boxing – once banned for being too capitalist and American – has grown rapidly in China since the ban was lifted in 1987.

“Chinese society is built around the idea of collectivism and boxing is completely the opposite,” says Chang. “It’s about being brash, creative, improvisational – having an outlandish persona like Muhammad Ali. On that ground level, the film’s subjects reflect the shaping of a new China.” Taking a wider perspective, Chang sees a parallel between boxing as a theme and China’s entrepreneurial push to become a capitalist society.

Based in the tobacco-farming town of Huili, in Sichuan province, boxing master Zhao and Coach Qi recruit and train boys and girls aged 12 to 18. They have produced more than 200 champions in 20 years.

“For me, the character of Coach Qi represents the image of a last Chinese hero – somebody trying to instil moral virtues to a society that’s undergoing rapid change and questioning what it means to be Chinese,” says Chang.

China Heavyweight made its Canadian premiere at 35 Cineplex Odeon cinemas across the country last month. It is the first Canada-China co-production of a documentary film and was produced by EyeSteelFilm and YuanFang Media.

Chang’s first feature-length documentary, Up the Yangtze, earned both Genie and Golden Horse awards for best documentary. The film shows a family’s struggle with the upheaval and displacement caused by China’s controversial Three Gorges Dam project, which created the world’s largest hydro-electric facility. Acclaimed by audiences and critics alike, Up the Yangtze became one of the top-grossing documentary box office releases in 2008.

After these tremendous successes, what’s next for Chang?

He is working on The Fruit Hunters, adapted from the book by fellow Concordia alumnus Adam Gollner, BA 04. Starring actor Bill Pullman of Lost Highway and Spaceballs fame, the documentary weaves history and fiction into the story of fruit hunters who travel the world to collect, preserve and share exotic fruit. Chang has also begun writing his first feature film, Eggplant, about a Chinese wedding photographer.

Chung graduated in 1999 with a BFA in film production from Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. At the time, he could hardly have imagined he’d meet such success. He credits former professors Daniel Cross, co-founder of EyeSteelFilm, and Martin Duckworth with setting him off in the right direction, helping hone his skills and get a foot in the door at the National Film Board of Canada.

“The great thing about Concordia’s cinema school is that the professors take the onus off the idea of having to make it in Hollywood and instill a certain value in the craft of filmmaking. They encouraged us to define our own vision. That’s something I’ll never forget,” says Chang.