City of Jade by Midi Z at the 2016 Berlinale

Seashore Image Productions is pleased to inform you that Midi Z (Jade Miners, Ice Poison, Poor Folk) is going to present his latest documentary, City of Jade, at the 2016 Berlinale Forum. Following his observational Jade Miners (2015 Rotterdam) on the predicament of the Burmese jade miners, Midi tells a very personal account of his family story set in the same location, the treacherous Jade City, which is the heart of the jade rush in Myanmar. 

Currently, Myanmar is undergoing some form of democratisation, however, it is not a linear process in terms of time. As the war between the government and the 

Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is still going, the corporations are forced to halt their operation in the jade mines. Time seems to have frozen in this war zone 

while waves of poor workers flock to the area. Carrying simple digging tools, they arrive in this paradise, dreaming of getting rich overnight; none of them has 

ever woken from that dream. 

Maybe we should rewind the time back to sixteen years ago. Rumour had it that Midi’s brother found a piece of valuable jade in the paradise while his family 

was down to their last penny. On behalf of their parents, Midi, the youngest child in the family, wrote more than a hundred letters to his elder brother, asking him 

to send money home, but they never heard anything from him. It turned out that his elder brother not only spent all his money on his way home but got arrested 

and sent to jail for drug abuse. His hard-earned cash was squandered just like that, and Midi never forgave his brother. Later as fortune smiled on Midi, he left 

his home as well as poverty behind and arrived in Taiwan for his studies, learning to become a man of rational thinking. 

However, as a narrator, how can Midi tell a story about a period with which he himself was involved? Midi has become a film director; he is debating with himself when searching for a film language that suits this story best. Furthermore, since his professional photography equipment was confiscated by the army right in the beginning, all the footage was filmed in secret with cameras designed for domestic use. As a result, most of the images were shot with shaky hand-held cameras, looking out-of-focus, and the recording is always mixed with background noises. We all know that only when you learn to do a job to perfection can you call 

yourself an adult, but the irony is, when you become an adult, you come to realise that nothing is perfect. 

Midi had pictured the jade mines in his head since he was little but never had the chance to see it for himself. Now he is trying to portray his brother in this documentary as he questions his brother why he became a drug addict and abandoned his family. Furthermore, at the time when Aung San Suu Kyi has once again brought hope to the Burmese, it is a film that depicts how people struggle for survival in the darkest corners of this probably the poorest country in Asia. 

Midi’s elder brother is still obsessed with jade, and therefore he decides to leave for the mines again. In the film, we see, on the one hand, Midi keeps persuading his brother to stay away from the drugs, but on the other hand, he is so eager to explore the land that possesses his brother’s mind and to show how the miners live their lives to the outside world. As a result, time seems to be caught in a tug of war. Although his brother deliberately chooses a different area this time, his old friends whom he used to do drugs with come to visit him. Hence, how different is this area from where they dug together sixteen years ago? Maybe time never 

exists in this godforsaken land. 

The problems are getting more and more complicated. At a time when the political situation remains so volatile, all the miners want to seize the chance and risk everything on it while the corporations, the government and the KIA keep extorting whatever they can from these poor workers. Should the film talk about the miners’ predicament? Or should it question why Midi’s brother abandoned his family? Or should it tell the Burmese history that has never been constructed in the cinema? Or should it include the identity crisis confronting the Burmese Chinese and the descendants of the Chinese soldiers? It seems that it is impossible to have a rational and harmonious Meta narration in this case. 

In the end of the film, we see that Midi’s elder brother turns out to be a gangster who not only has a passion for classical poems but had once longed for studying in Taiwan. Nevertheless, it is his youngest brother who had realised his dream. The irony is, now his youngest brother aims a camera at him, asking him about his past. Quietly, he defends himself by denying being a gangster; the chilling air surrounding the pair seems to show us that what we see in the film is often crueller than in real life. One of the brotherslearns from the nature (since Midi’s brother can tell ten different varieties of jade with his naked eyes) while the other gains his 

knowledge from books (but Midi has to admit that in the end, men are animals and can remain rational in only 20% of his lifetime.) 

Eventually, we come to understand a fact – either you are the storyteller or the listener, you are simply luckier; you have not fallen victim to drugs because you can foresee a future for yourself. Eventually, Midi has not got the answer he was looking for just as his brother has not found valuable jade; the elder brother could only watch his dream, desire, goal and innocence vanish into thin air. The miners are dreaming about the harsh reality in the paradise. But even if you have seen through it, please do not wake them up because they are just on a journey to the heart of darkness.