26 August 2008 6:40 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news
By Michael Atkinson
The new Chinese documentary "Please Vote for Me" (2007) has an irresistible arc: take a class of average middle class third-graders, give them the opportunity to vote for "class monitor;" tell the three candidates that they have to run campaigns, in order to net as many votes as they can; and let the political process run its course . that is, let it corrupt, humiliate and demoralize the children just as they were led to believe they were creating "democracy." Weijun Chen's film . which runs a mere 55 minutes . has an almost crystalline purity to its ironies. Three Wuhan children are "selected" by the teachers . two boys (one of whom is the incumbent monitor, and given to shoving his classmates around) and a girl, whose shy demeanor would seem to make her a dubious candidate. Right out of the gate, the campaigns become hilarious-yet-chilling mirror images of adult political
(more)
Michael Atkinson
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