Trailer for Double Happiness which will be screening at the Hot Docs Film Festival.
Near Huizhou, China, stands a replica of the idyllic mountain village of Hallstatt, Austria—a staging ground for provocative questions about tradition and innovation, copying and creativity, and contemporary China’s gaze toward the West. As Western countries increasingly imported cheap Chinese commodities, the economic giant began to construct an idealized European past into a vast simulacrum of luxury playgrounds for the rich. In the last two decades, China has observed an explosion in theme parks meant to both miniaturize the landscape of China and represent the entirety of the world. But these pronounced locations are just a symptom of a much larger transformation of territory. A television journalist ponders, “perhaps in ten years we won’t be eligible to call ourselves Chinese anymore,” as the landscape increasingly takes on the character of Western nations. Ella Raidel’s refreshingly thoughtful and sumptuously photographed essay film offers an unusual mirror to the West through the lens of contemporary China.