I Will Be There After My Wandering

In addition to the 80th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, China is marking another significant anniversary this year: 120 years since the birth of cinema in the country.

I Will Be There After My Wandering has been produced to mark this important milestone. It tells the story of a man who, as a young student, left China in the wake of the Japanese invasion and went to study in the United States, where he eventually embarked on a career in film-making. His name was Wan-go Weng.

In the course of 40 years in the US, Wan-go Weng created dozens of documentary films, all of them focused on China. At a time when the world knew little about his native country, he was among the very first to promote Chinese culture internationally, using the medium of documentary to turn a spotlight on its rich civilization. Yet both his work and his life remain little known.

The 60-minute documentary took two and a half years to complete. It features interviews with 33 experts and scholars, and family members and friends of Wan-go Weng, as well as rare archive footage uncovered by the crew in the course of visiting ten cities in China and the US. Ultimately, I Will Be There After My Wandering tells the story of an exile who spent most of his life composing a cinematic "letter home".