Synopsis

This documentary follows two bloggers on their journalistic road trips across China. They denounce social abuses using mobile phones, cameras and laptops, with the authorities constantly breathing down their neck.

Festivals & Awards
Tribeca Film Festival, 2012
Opening Night Film – Lens Politica Film & Media Art Festival, Helsinki, 2012
Best Documentary Special Jury Award – Independent Film Festival Boston, 2012
Best Documentary – Little Rock Film Festival, 2012
Emerging International Filmmaker Award – Open City Docs Fest, 2012
Best Cinematography – Woods Hole Film Festival, 2012
Independent Sprit Award – EBS International Documentary Festival, South Korea, 2012
Watch Docs International Human Rights Film Festival, Warsaw, 2012
Human Rights Human Wrongs Doc Festival, Oslo, Norway, 2013
One World Int’l Human Rights Film Festival, Prague, Czech Republic, 2013

Director’s Statements
“I wanted to make a film that explored the critical new intersection of youth, activism and technology but after getting to know Zola and Tiger Temple over the course of 4 years of filming, I realized their personal stories revealed a much different narrative about a startling new China that was also still reckoning with its painful Maoist past. This film is about how average Chinese citizens have begun to empower themselves in China’s new media landscape. I will never forget the time I solemnly asked Zola, “how low key should we keep things?” and he replied with a smile, “I already put some pictures online of you filming me. The authorities read my blog, so we’ll find out soon enough if they have a problem with this.”
For both Zola and Tiger, transparency was always crucial and a way of showing they have nothing to hide.”
– Stephen Maing

Director’s Bio
STEPHEN MAING is a New York-based filmmaker. He is a fellow of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program and a grant recipient of the MacArthur Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Independent Television Service. His filmmaking merges an interest in underrepresented individuals and communities, and the ever-evolving considerations of identity, visual language and narrative structures. He edited and co-produced the award-winning documentary Lioness and directed the narrative film Little Hearts. Stephen works as a cinematographer, editor and director on documentary and narrative films and teaches classes in documentary cinematography at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Links
hightechlowlifefilm.com/film/
www.facebook.com/hightechlowlifemovie