A PhD Candidate (2014)

"A PhD Candidate" is a film about a Chinese PhD student living in America. He is sponsored by Chinese government. The government pays him some money every month for living expenses. In exchange he has to return to China right after graduation. After coming here, he found he still lives in a small circle of Chinese people isolated from the American society. His professor and peers are also from China. The environment makes him doesn’t have many chances to communicate with American people. And most importantly, he doesn’t think it is necessary to get integrated with the American social life. Since he knows he will not stay in here. He feels it is more comfortable to live in a closed environment.
The above is what interested me at the beginning. I intended to make this film of his life to see how this unusual identity influenced him. Along with the process of filming, I realized I was involving in a new form of transnational academic life. In American academia today there are many Chinese PhDs . The full scholarship or funding provided by Chinese government covered their tuition and living expenses. A PhD for them is more like a job, rather than studying. Also their relation with professors is similar to a kind of employment. So the film is not only about the identity of a foreigner, but also about a kind of academic labor outsourcing. Through watching the film the audience may find how it is like in the lower level of the academic pyramid.