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Fangshan Church

Xu Xin

Release year: 2005

Run time: 80 mins

Film type: Documentary

Synopsis

Fangshan, a small town in Jiangsu Province, boasts an active community of Christians. At the start of the 2000s, a church was built here with money from locals’ relatives in Taiwan. On Sundays, upwards of 900 people attend, mostly farming families. While their faith governs how they handle day-to-day affairs, they must also contend with other constraining forces within the community, from traditional folk religious practices to laws forbidding evangelism.

 

Director biography

Xu Xin was born in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, in 1966. He is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Beijing and Nanjing. In his early years, he experimented with oil paintings and photography. His documentaries focus on marginalized communities in China.