This year's Academy Awards will shine more than one light toward the plight of the world's children.

As always, the "Best Documentary Short" category offers some of the best films made. "Recycled Life", the story of Guatemalans living in the garbage dump there is a nominee, and "The Blood of Yingzhou District" appears to be a worthy contender for the prize, and a film anyone with ties to China will want to see.

Here's a bit about it from the UN Associate Film Festival site:

Description:
No one knows how old Gao Jun is. Four? Older? Younger? Whatever his biological age, he has none of the verbal babble, or ready tears, of a child his age. The film tracks this orphan for a year as his closest surviving kin - his uncles - weigh what to do with him. The older uncle's dilemma: if he allows his children to play with Gao Jun, who is HIV-positive, they will be ostracized by terrified neighbors. The younger uncle's dilemma: so long as Gao Jun remains in the house, the young man may not be able to find a wife. Gao Jun is one of just a handful of children we come to know in this film: Nan Nan who after her parents' death, was shunned by relatives and left to live without adult care, with "Little Flower," her teen-age sister; and the Huang siblings who vividly describe their ostracism at school. The result of misinformation about the nature of the disease, the suffering of these orphans is all the more devastating for being largely unnecessary.

An interview with the director and producer appears in the Shanghai Daily and is a very interesting read.

Here's a short bit:

Q: What moved you most?

Yang: The 14-hour train ride from Beijing to the villages of Anhui was like a journey back in time: fields fallow in the winter cold, earthen gravesites visible through the stubble, fishermen at the riverbanks. If you forget the telephone poles, you can imagine yourself a century back in time - a time when disease had the power to strike incomprehensible terror into the lives of farming families.

The three Huang children, orphaned by AIDS, led me to their family home. It was full of empty medicine bottles and old toys, and children's scribbles covered the walls. But it was the smell - the smell of death - that had a deep impact on me.

It was something that couldn't be captured in a documentary. But what could be captured was the range of the children's desires and feelings: hurt, yes, but also anger, playfulness, mischief, longing and above all, a fierce will to live.

For more information, you can contact the producer at
tl@thomaslennonfilms.com