90-Minute Programme for Channel 4 (2009)
Love & Death in Shanghai
Themes of love and death swirl around the true story of the murder of a school teacher. Brought in for questioning, her killer turns out to be a senior Communist Party official...
“Tonight we see part of the magus opus of possibly the greatest documentary maker of our time. Much more than docu-soap, because of its deeper lyricism and the extraordinary insight it gives into city life in China. It is essential viewing of the week.” - South China Morning Post
“A swirling, searing, soaring portrait of a city” - Time Out
"Here we follow the scarcely believable story of the head of Shanghai’s Primary schools, Chen Zhenhua. Despite being only in his early 30’s he is a senior member of the Communist Party. Parts of a young woman’s body have been found in a local canal. It turns out that the murdered woman is schoolteacher and the girlfriend of Chen. We catch the story as Chen is hauled in for questioning. A story that is to take us through the whole criminal system, through Shanghai’s High Court to Chen’s eventual sentence of death. The story appears in episode 6 of Shanghai Vice but here we treat it as a stand alone single film version."
Phil Agland