Details
Bicycle-riding activist 'Tiger Temple' and vegetable seller 'Zola' are two of China's first Citizen Reporters.
Using laptops, mobiles and digital cameras to bypass the strict codes of conventional Chinese media the two risk political persecution to give first-hand, unmediated accounts of untold stories from around China.
However, with a 30 year age gap, their approaches differ considerably. Twenty seven year old Zola is on a coming-of-age journey from produce vendor to internet celebrity, making the most of sensational urban stories to increase his fame and future prospects. Meanwhile, Tiger Temple, an activist in his late 50’s, is committed to understanding China’s tumultuous history, reporting on plights faced by farmers in the agricultural hinterland.
A fascinating portrait of news-gathering in the 21st century, High Tech, Low Life is also the story of two people fuelled by idealism, all the while struggling to reconcile an evolving sense of individualism, social responsibility and personal sacrifice.