"Please Vote For Me"The documentary Please Vote For Me was made by Weijun Chen in 2007. This documentary was about a third grade class in China that was given the chance to learn how a democracy really works. The teacher of this class chose three students that would be competing to become the class monitor Cheng Cheng, Xiao Fei, and Luo Lei. Two boys and one girl were chosen as candidates and then told that they could pick two student supporters to help in their campaign. Throughout the film you are able to see the children's lives at home, during class, and while talking strategy with their parents. During the days before the actual election speeches were given on why they should be elected and why their opponent was unfit or too weak to fulfill the job. Also debates were held during class allowing the three to point out each other's flaws in front of an audience. It was interesting to see that through the whole process the children's parents become more and more involved in their child's campaign. At some points the parents were even teaching their kids how to go about tearing others down and how to make the other kids drop out from the competition. In the end one of the little boys ended up being elected after showering the entire class with gifts provided by his father. This movie was an extremely intriguing film about how nine and ten year olds view the idea of democracy.The major theme in this documentary was simply to portray how a third grader may see democracy, especially while being raised in a country like China.Two of Weijun Chen's most famous works are Please Vote For Me (2007) and The Biggest Chinese Restaurant In The World (2008). The Biggest Chinese Restaurant In The World refers to the inside story of a five thousand seat Chinese restaurant called West Lake. West Lake is located in the Hunan province city of Changsha and is more noted for its extravagant shows that for the food it serves. This owner of this dynamic restaurant having well over three hundred chefs is Mrs. Qin Linzi. Chen may have had some other minor works, but these are his most famous.The main subjects in Please Vote For Me were the three children nominated to run for class monitor. Some other important subjects were the families of each candidate and of course the other children within the class. The teacher also played a key role by giving all of the students the guidelines they would need for the project and explained how to go about being elected.The type of editing that Chen used was very appealing because it wasn't from an interviewing standpoint. The final product shows you exactly how the kids and everyone else reacted to certain situations without any questioning period. This type of editing in Please Vote For Me gave a smooth, more realistic feeling to the piece. The cinematography of the piece was also very complementing. No major action in the film seemed planned out. The documentary came across simply as whatever happens, happens. The unplanned attitude was most noticeable in parts where the kids said certain things to their parents and fellow students. The music wasn't really an issue in this particular documentary because no music had been chosen. If Chen had decided to include some type of music I think a fun, techno mix might have been a good fit.The part within the film that was so surprising to me was how involved the parents became in their child's campaign. Sometimes it seemed as though the children were acting more like adults than the actual parents. The documentary Please Vote For Me was a true pleasure to watch and I would recommend it to anyone.

Luo Lei, Cheng Cheng and Xu Xiaofei are all in the same 3rd grade class and are told by their teacher that the three of them will be running in an election to see who will be class monitor. It seems that such democratic-style elections are unknown in China and at first the kids seem a bit puzzled. However, they soon get into the spirit of this and the kids act out lessons about the worst attributes of the electoral system--with name-calling, bribery, threats and a variety of other dirty tricks. This really had me wondering if the kids and their very, very overly-involved parents came up with all this on their own or if perhaps this film was deliberately staged to be a parable about the evils of self-rule! If it wasn't staged, then it says a lot about the natural inclinations of humans.Luo Lei appeared to be very capable as monitor--provided you want a kid who will slap the others around to get them to bend to his iron will! Cheng Cheng was, in many ways, like a little "Eric Cartman"--a rather nasty little porker who slapped his parents around and seemed to have gotten his game plan from Machiavelli--what a conniver! Poor little Xu Xiaofei seemed like an adorable and sweet little kid--and soon it seemed like she was out of her element because she's just too nice to run a dirty campaign like the boys!! Frankly, she was the only likable kid of the three--so naturally she's the one who ended up with the least number of votes--a case where Chinese kids are not so much different from their American counterparts! This was a very fascinating experiment, though I was amazed how dirty the teacher allowed the race to be (hence, making me wonder if perhaps it was all staged to a degree to prove that democracy won't work). I was most surprised at the parents, however, as they were nothing liked I'd expected! The seemed far more involved with their kids and allowed some behaviors that were pretty bad (particularly out of Cheng Cheng)--perhaps this over-indulgence is related to their only being allowed one child per household. In addition, the parents continually drilled the kids, wrote speeches for them and prodded them unmercifully--like you'd expect from an American father who demands that their child excel in sports.Perhaps this film was most helpful to me not because of its lesson about democracy but because it gave amazing insights into the Chinese family and children. It was refreshing to see that even though the government is so different from a Western one, the kids seemed a lot like regular kids--for good and for bad! In particular, I was happy to see that Chinese kids can also be obnoxious and full of energy just like the kids I teach her in the States!!

Many people don't realize there are village and town level elections in China. I'm fairly certain at least over 90% if not all of the villages and towns have leaders democratically elected. (Note: the government usually don't pick the candidates, but voting fraud happen from time to time from what I heard. Yes, this is what happens when there's a democracy without proper voter education and regulations, most importantly, without a real voting culture. people just buy votes.) Therefore I have no reason to question the authenticity of this documentary. Common, it's an election between three third graders.If you think Chinese government care enough to stage this documentary you are most definitely paranoid.This documentary itself actually made cases for both pro-democracy and anti-democracy arguments. On one hand, it's scary to have uneducated voters and unregulated voting process in a democracy; on another hand, without real democracy, the imitation can only be so crude and cruel.

This movie provided a once in a lifetime opportunity an insider view of a primary school in China. Better yet, you see what happens when a culture deprived of democracy, and on top of that when children are given the liberty to make a democratic decision! It was such a joy to see how these children interacted with each other & how the families were involved in their campaign. I wish we could show our youth the importance of what is so widely taken for granted in our own country. The spirit of competition was over the top, it was a thrill to see the drive and determination of these youngsters! Enjoy, throughly entertaining!