Broken Pots, Broken Dreams

by Maris Boyd Gillette.

Broken Pots, Broken Dreams explores what the transition from state workers to private entrepreneurs means to the craftsmen and women of the porcelain workers of Jingdezhen, China.  Once a proud workforce who's historical memory of the porcelain craft is – "we made porcelain for emperors"– now all but forgotten. 

Narrated by the author and filmmaker in the 2nd-person – not normal in anthropological film – the author has said that she wanted her audience to try to "imagine yourself…."  Imagine yourself, laid off; imagine yourself believing in something almost religiously and then it all being taken away.  What would you do?  She wants the audience to imagine the hardships of her subjects.  It's sort of like that time as a child when you discover Santa is not real, or, possibly as a religious person, it is revealed to you that God doesn't exist.  I find that I sympathize with that which touched Gillette's heart – her empathy with her subjects – but I think that use of metaphor and editing would have produced a much more arresting film than her telling us to "imagine" that.


I found this film somewhat interesting as I am working in Eastern Germany with a culture who has similarly gone through a major political ideological change – from socialism to capitalism.  And, also relevant to me – this on a personal/professional level – is the transition and change of my career as a commercial photographer with the advent of digital technologies, and the transition of print-based media to web-based.  In both cases something fundamental has been changed in life.  To use a cliché, a rug has been pulled out from underneath.  However, it's only my tangential familiarity which made this film interesting.