DRAGON GIRLS screening at Brooklyn Film Festival: Windmill Studios
June 5th, 2013 by Mr. C
Director: Inigo Westmeier
Cast: Xin Chenxi, ChenXi, Huang Luolan, Yang Ziyu, Quan Ling, Xu Manyu
Genre: Documentary on Shaolin Tagou Martial Arts school
Dragon Girls is a documentary that follows a handful of young ladies who take up residence at the Shaolin Tagou Martial Art School as they live the lifestyle of training in Chinese martial arts and elementary cultural education. The Shaolin Tagou School is the largest private Kung Fu school in China and incidentally is right next door to the famous Shaolin Temple. It houses 35,000 students, trainers, & educators. It appears that most of the parents that send their children to this school had good intentions that Shaolin Tagou would turn their kids into a well disciplined kung fu fighting machine. The training looked tough. The trainers looked tougher. And the environment looked similiar to being in the militiary. The headmaster of the school reminded me of a warden at the penitentiary. It’s also apparent that some of the students in the school would just as much not want to be there but realize that upon graduation, they most likely would find themselves in a better situation to provide for their families. This documentary if anything raises layers of questions that largely go unanswered at least from my perspective. The movie was uplifting to a certain extent especially when we see the students persevere through the training while still maintaining the playfulness and innocence as kids when they have that one day off. It was amazing to see how the girls sustained their composure throughout despite all the hardships and obstacles at the school. It’s difficult to criticize another culture for their customs and ways of industrializing the population in every aspect because their lifestyle is so foreign to us. What was sad to me was the lack of love and emotion that the fathers showed to their children at times, using motivational factors like “if you don’t place first in the competition, I will not come to visit you”. I thought the interviews with the martial art trainers, the Head Master of the school, and the Shaolin monk offered a nice contrast in thoughts and opinions of martial arts virtue & humanity in general. The student that ran away back home to Shanghai was also a telling story. The hard boiled discipline doesn’t just get propagated to the students as the instructors are also limited in contact with their loved ones. It seems like not only students defect but instructors do as well. Now what does that tell you? My question arises after the student graduates. Where do they go then? Do most go into the Police force, working on movies, or perhaps represent their country in competitions? Maybe they find jobs working in the school as intructors? Maybe most go no-where and end up going back to their village? This documentary never really answers that nor suggests career paths for our subjects. One thinking I have is that maybe the Shaolin Tagou school or if I want to be more cynical, the Chinese government didn’t want certain information to be revealed or suggested in the final output or maybe it was just an afterthought on the directors part?
There was no narration on the film, just interviews with the subjects. Visually the film was stunning offering a birdseye view camera shot of some of the massive training sessions attended by thousands at the school. The synchronous movements and precise coordination of techniques from the students were truly a sight to behold. Although I wasn’t totally wowed by the film, I thought the film was eye-opening and raises a lot of cultural food for thought in a world we are still learning a lot about. I also thought it was brilliant that the director made a film solely on chinese female kung fu practioners because that is more of a trying story in my opinion. In China, girls are not viewed in the same high regards as boys and therefore are not given equal opportunities. The underlying backdrop of old school techniques a la The Shaolin Temple in contrast with the new school train of thought and industrialization of Kung Fu in Shaolin Tagou was a great way to bring the talks to the table.
Go and watch DRAGON GIRLS to see how you feel about alternate education at the school of Shaolin Tagou hard knocks! Dragon Girls screens at The Brooklyn Film Festival at Indie Screen on June 6 – 8:30pm! The Brooklyn Film Festival runs through June 9th.
Tags: brooklyn film festival, china, documentary, martlial arts, shaolin
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