Nanfu Wang

Left to right (Klayman, Wang and Nagan)

Nanfu Wang is an independent filmmaker from China who currently resides in New York City. Her debut film Hooligan Sparrow was premiered at festivals in over 25 countries.

Early life

Wang was born on a small rural farming village in 1985 in Jiangxi Province, China.[1] When Wang was 12 years old, she lost her father (he was 33 when he died) and was forced to drop out of school to work so she could support her family. Being that China’s public education varies from province to province, Wang was not able to attend high school because she could not afford it. Instead, she enrolled herself into a vocational school and eventually started working as a teacher for primary school-age children.[1]

Education

With several years of work experience underneath her belt, Wang studied English Literature at a local University's Continuing Education Program. After that, she was granted a full fellowship from Shanghai University while enrolled in a graduate program for English Language and Literature. Later, she became interested in film and went back to school to study it. She earned a Journalism degree from Ohio University and holds a documentary degree from New York University’s Documentary Program.[1]

Career and work

After the completion of her studies, Wang’s work consists of documenting footage of people who have been victimized or discriminated from various arenas across the country.[1] Wang has many short films that can be translated into several languages like Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Wang’s mission is to continue to seek the untold stories of people who are far from a normal life. Some of her works includes films such as “I am another you” and “Ye Haiyan”.

Ye Haiyan (Hooligan Sparrow)

Hooligan Sparrow shows Nanfu Wang and several other cast members under government surveillance after documenting/capturing footage of many sexual assault/violence cases being committed by high-profile local figures in China.[2] In the film Wang states that these cases are being disregarded because of how well-renowned these people are.[2]

Wang has stated that she created the film because “I was interested in many, many topics like the healthcare system and the educational system in China because I didn’t go to high school or college in China. Another topic that interested me was sex workers because, like I said, I grew up in a village and I had seen a lot of women from the village who didn’t have access to education and they end up becoming sex workers because they did not have skills, they did not have education and they were really discriminated against. So, I wanted to make a film about the poorest sex workers in the country, but I also knew that it would be hard to get access to them. I’ve known Hooligan Sparrow–her name is Ye Haiyan–for a long time through social media, but I had never seen her in person at the time.”[3]

When creating the film Wang was not aware that this would make her a target for government surveillance, later stating that she "knew very little about the activist world".[3] Wang has noted that her family and friends were followed and interrogated by officers who questioned whether or not they knew her, her whereabouts, and her current actions.[3] Fearing for her life, she fled to another country to make her work accessible to a wider range of audience and was free to do so without any restraints.[2]

Major contributions and awards

Wang is an activist for China’s human and women’s rights. Wang’s film “Hooligan Sparrow” has screened at festivals in over 25 countries including Hot Docs, Sheffield, Full Frame, and Human Rights Watch Film Fest.[4] Her film I am another you was the winner for SXSW LUNA Chicken & Egg Award for Best Documentary Feature directed by a woman and SXSW Special Jury Award for Excellence in Documentary Storytelling.[4] Wang is a recipient of the Sundance Documentary Fund and Bertha Britdoc Journalism Fund, Sundance and IFP supported filmmaker.[1] She was also placed on the shortlist for the 2016 Oscar for Feature Length Documentary for Hooligan Sparrow.[5] Wang was honored by the International Documentary Association with the 2016 Emerging Filmmaker Award.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Nanfu Wang". Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  2. 1 2 3 "12 Female Activists You Didn't Know Are Changing the World". Global Citizen. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  3. 1 2 3 Blyth, Antonia (2016-12-27). "'Hooligan Sparrow's Nanfu Wang On The Stacked Odds Of Exposing Corruption In China: "Every Day I Was Pretty Afraid"". Deadline. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  4. 1 2 3 "ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS". I Am Another You. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  5. ↑ Benutty, John (December 8, 2016). "Oscars 2017 documentary feature shortlist: 'Hooligan Sparrow' is a daring and timely look at political protest". Gold Derby.
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