114 minutes / Color
English; Mandarin / English subtitles
Release: 2009
Copyright: 2009
Filmed with unprecedented access to a Communist Party leader, investigative filmmaker Zhou Hao offers a startlingly candid look inside Chinese politics at the local level.
As Chinese Communist Party secretary, Guo Yongchang was the most powerful man in his county, located in the rural inland province of Henan. Guo invited acclaimed documentary filmmaker Zhou Hao to record his final months in office. Through Zhou's lens, we see Guo work tirelessly to achieve his greatest desire: for Henan to match the affluence of booming coastal areas. Zhou also captures the sordid details of local-level politics in pursuit of growth: lavish parties with foreign investors, threats to local workers protesting unpaid wages, and offers of bribes and kickbacks.
Hailed by international press as an exceptional work of investigative filmmaking, The Transition Period captures the daily life of a Chinese official with incredible ground-level detail. With boastfully candid interviews from Guo and fly-on-the-wall coverage of closed-door dealings, Zhou lays bare the unsavory dynamics within China's top-down power structures. Penetrating in scope yet objective in its approach, The Transition Period reveals the conflicting forces shaping China's path to prosperity.
"A rare, fascinating look at how the Chinese government operates." —The Associated Press
"The film stands out for its realistic and rare first hand records...recommended for any level of audience to get a glimpse of Chinese government officials' daily lives." —Educational Media Reviews Online
Select Accolades
A young schoolteacher unknowingly enters a tangled web of politics.
YANG Jin | 2012 | 93 minutes | Color | Mandarin | English subtitles
Twenty years after Ceausescu, Romanian GDP is low and infrastructure poor. Interviewing the oligarchs who control the Romanian economy, this film finds out what happened.
Alexandru Solomon | 2011 | 55 minutes | Color | English subtitles
An artist's personal exploration of China's recent history from the Cultural Revolution through the 1980s, told through a rich collage of original artwork, archival and family photographs, and animation.
Shui-Bo Wang | 1999 | 29 minutes | Color | English
