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Last day of class. Moments before we left the village for the last time. I've already told some of you that tears were shed when we left. I think the boy on the left is actually sneezing but the girl rubbing her eyes had spent the morning with us crying. They were happy kids but sad that day that we were leaving. I was, too.




But leave we did and I took my memories of this amazing time and all that I'd learned from these wonderful people and went back to Beijing.

I got back just in time for my finals and did pretty well considering I hadn't been to class for a month. I had some pretty good teachers while I was gone though.

And then I decided to stick around for another two months. I had some things I wanted to do yet and I had to make up for the month that I'd spent away.

During that time I started shooting a little film that I plan to continue here in the States and finish when I go back to China. All I had time for was a little test shoot of a couple important scenes. My cameraman and good new friend, Cai -- he found me stranded by the side of the road one day and gave me a ride back from the distant wilds of Beijing where the huge and new Chinese Cinema Museum that I'd been visiting sits all alone; we had chatted briefly at the museum where he works and he recognized me as he was driving by -- wanted to try out a new kind of camera and I wanted to explore the visual possibilities of a great location that the wonderful Eva found for us.

Eva is a young woman who'd been recommended to me as someone who'd never worked on a film shoot before but who was very eager to do whatever needed to be done because she's eager to work in film, specifically documentaries, and just wanted to be on the set. When I met her she was in that limbo that so many Chinese students have found themselves: waiting to see if she was going to be granted a visa to study abroad. The production manager who'd recommended Eva turned out to be unavailable and by then I had wisely scaled back my ambitions for this round of shooting and before it was all over Eva ended up wearing the hats of location scout, production manager, and even actor. Eva had found some actors for us to audition but as I was sitting there watching the actors audition and watching her I realized that she'd be great for the lead role. Which she was. I think she liked it and I'm really lucky to have found her. Any lack of experience was more than made up for by her intelligence and coolheadedness and I would never have guessed that she'd never worked on a film shoot. I was very happy when I heard she got her visa. She's studying in England now and I think she's going to be very successful at whatever she decides to do. That's her in the video below.



I was going to do a little rough cut of the scenes that we shot and add it here but since it was just a workout, a little shoot-around, if you will, I've decided not to ruin you as potential viewers of the final product so all you get now is this tantilizing clip of the artist at work. I don't know if Cai shot this knowing that this moment must be preserved for posterity or if he hadn't quite figured out how to work the on/off button yet.