Filmed in Beijing with a Hi-8 camera and a microphone mounted on a chopstick in the summer of 1996, FOR BEIJING WITH LOVE & SQUALOR (59 min., 1997) is a remarkable and intimate insider's look at a seldom-seen segment of Beijing youth culture that lovingly captures a post-Tiananmen Square, pre-Internet generation in nightclubs, underground rock clubs, and drunken late-night confessionals. By turns a portrait of a city and a document of a cultural moment, the film follows two disaffected art students-cum- aspiring rock musicians through a world of chaotic cultural collisions, confused politics, and disillusioned ideals to create a meditation on language, translation, cultural appropriation, and rock 'n' roll.
FOR BEIJING WITH LOVE & SQUALOR is an award-winning documentary that has screened at film festivals in Europe, Asia and the US, including the 1998 Singapore International Film Festival, the 1998 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival, Berlin Ethno Filmfest 1999, Ovarvideo Portugal '98, and the 1998 UFVA Nextframe Film Festival; it has also been broadcast on Taiwanese public television and WYBE Philadelphia's Through the Lens series.