A gently ironic and eminently watchable ‘travel’ documentary, Sean Wang’s impressive film charts the unusual journey of iconic blocks of marble as they are transported from a Greek quarry to China where they are turned into Hellenistic-style statues with the leftover fragments made into fridge magnets and other souvenirs, and then shipped back to Greece to be sold to enthusiastic Chinese tourists.
Blessed with a light touch, some strikingly composed shots and a wry sense of humour, the film is a bright and breezy film packed with some intriguing characters who all help move the story on at a nice pace, making great use of some stunning backdrops. Its playful quality helps make it clear this is a film not to be taken overly seriously, but at its core there is also a serious element when it comes to the Greek economy, the environment and changes to employment practices in China.
The film opens in Athens where tourists view the beautiful ancient marble monuments, but then swiftly switches to Greece’s Santorini Water Park where Chinese tourists frolic in the water, overseen by “ancient” pillars as well as, for some reason, a version of London’s Big Ben. Some 200 containers of marble are shipped to China from the now Chinese-owned Didima quarry each month, arriving at Quanzhou Port ready to be sculpted.
The film follows the marble through its journey to Quyang, the ‘Chinese Capital of Carving’ where the streets are lined with companies sculpting, on to Master Congda Zhen’s opulent home The Palace of Art and Sculpture which he founded with his father to produce Western-style sculpture. He was inspired by trips he took to see classical European sculptures, in particular the Venus de Milo.
Off-cuts from the sculpting are moved on again to factories that produce tourist miniatures – such as fridge magnets and artefacts, often of Greek gods or images of Greek islands – hand-painted, in some cases, by families of Chinese workers. With rich irony the gifts are shipped back to Greece (arriving back at the port of Piraeus, which was bought by Chinese State Enterprise COSCO in 2016) where they are sold in gift shops, often bought by Chinese tourists keen to experience to classic white-washed houses and bright blue sea.
Along the marble route, we meet a variety of people who play a role in the cyclical consumer chain: the Chinese businessman who’s taken over the Greek marble quarry; the workers and their children in a souvenir factory in Quanzhou and a French marble dealer based in China. Running through the spine of the film are Marianna and Sofia Erotokritou, the Chinese-speaking twin daughters of a Greek Cypriot entrepreneur who run a tourist and migration service and who act as ‘cultural ambassadors,’ accompanying their father on his business trips to the Far East and meeting with possible wealthy clients.
The film cleverly and subtly highlights the complex connections between the different parts along the marble journey and dwells on the European aspirations of the Chinese middle class as well as noting the challenges facing the Greek economy during China’s boom period.
Netherlands-Hong Kong-France-Greece, 2021, 97mins
Dir Sean Wang
Production MUYI Film, Blackfin Production
International sales Rediance
Producers Jia Zhao, Zijian Wang
Cinematography Xiao Xiao, Carles Muñoz Gómez-Quintero, Sean Wang
Editors Tao Gu, Claudio Hughes, Sean Wang
Music Jeroen Goeijers
With Marianna Erotokritou, Sofia Erotokritou, Zhen Congda, Laurent Sebban, Wang Xiaoying
