Documentaries

At the Vietnam-China frontier area, authorities spend sleepless nights.  The place is a hotspot for smugglers, especially those who illegally transport chicken from China to Vietnam via different roads.

To make this daring documentary, Le Thi Thoa and Bui Tuan Linh pretended to be tourists and interviewed an illegal transporter who guided them through the dark and complicated world of chicken smugglers.

After over 4 years of avian flu incidence, are the Vietnamese and the Chinese now fully prepared to combat this threat to health and livelihood?

“China Border” explores the impact of the long bout with the H5N1 virus on the ways of life of poultry farmers in Vietnam and China.

Le Thi Thoa and Bui Tuan Linh bring the viewer to a breeding place for fighting cocks, a chicken farm, and a dumping ground for slaughtered, illegally-imported birds. They show how citizens, at different levels of involvement ,can rise to the challenge of overcoming the hurdles brought on by the disease.

 

This is why in Lao PDR, cockfighting arenas are banned by the authorities in big cities like Vientiane. They are allowed only in remote communities, where it is easier to screen the animals. Authorities from both Laos and Thailand have also prohibited the transporting of birds across the Lao-Thai border.

 

This comprehensive account of Lao PDR’s experience with bird flu by Lamngeune Latsaath shows the resourcefulness and resilience of a threatened population. 

 

 Lao businessmen, however, are protesting against their aggressive Chinese competitors. Some allege that the low prices of Chinese products are due to unskilled laborers and low quality machines churning out substandard products. Illegal practices, such as unregistered businesses and tax evasion, are also rampant.

 

 “Our Village” follows the life of one such Vietnamese, Yang Xiu Xing.  But instead of the good fortune that she and her two children were hoping for in China, they were met by unexpected events that left them reeling. 

 

Fortunately, in 2001, an AIDS treatment and prevention research group in Chiang Mai, Thailand developed a new drug which could effectively reduce the transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from mother to child.

Through a project of the United Nations’ Children’s Fund and the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese doctors trained in Thailand to learn more about how to block the transmission.