Not One Less

The function of documentary and documentation within children’s media is to present and represent realities. It’s interesting that firmer assertions of actuality often have the connotation of hardship. This makes it difficult to know what would be most useful for children to view. As a child I disliked Harold and the Purple Crayon simply because his parents appeared to be nonexistent. I do not think I had the capacity to appreciate the devastating social and political realities which affect the smallest and weakest among us. It would have hurt me too much. But because empathy is crucial to foster in all audiences, young and old alike, there is a gradient to be aware of and to interact with, by which portrayals of suffering can eventually be appropriate and useful.

Segments of Sesame Street brought real children and real adults to interact with each other and with the Monsters, and it introduced me to types of people I would have been unfamiliar with otherwise. Arthur’s “And Now A Word from Us Kids!” was a short documentary segment between episodes. I remember the one about students from a school for the blind making chocolate chip cookies together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Dh_oTOnRI

A is for Autism is one of the most empathetic documentary shorts I have ever seen. It pairs the audio of interviews with autistic people with animated illustrations representing their inner spaces and exterior experiences. It is cluttered, chaotic, childlike, educational, and profoundly eye opening, and functions to bring its viewers into the mindset of an autistic life experience. Because its form follows its function, it encourages a deep and unusual kind of empathy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxt3FBVq8Jg

Another empathetic documentation about children and hardship, but probably for older audiences, is Not One Less, a film that proves the documentary power of even fictional narratives. Not One Less plays out like a desperate and insistent filmic rendition of “There’s A Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza” taking place in China during the education reform. I have seen and read and listened to accounts of an underprivileged or in someway disabled person fighting all odds and achieving their goals through their determination and sheer willpower. Without being dismissive of one-armed wrestlers and paraplegic windsurfers, the inherent systematic degradation portrayed and fought against in Not One Less is the greatest display of determination and persistence I have ever seen.

Wei Minzhi is a thirteen-year-old teacher of an impoverished rural Chinese classroom. When one of her students, Zhang Huike, runs away to the city of Zhangjiakou she tries to get him back, first by attempting to earn her way, and then by walking there herself, scouring the city to find him and bring him back to school. Wei Minzhi’s tenacity is herculean. The film is one deadlock situation after the next, tedious and minute defenses against the deep and vast offense of bureaucratically enforced inequality. It is aggravating to watch because of the logistical impossibilities of the circumstance set against the duration and repetition involved with fighting it.

Wei Minzhi’s endeavor is so small and specific that you could never guess how endlessly complicated and arduous it is and keeps being. It is fascinating to compare Not One Less to Maidentrip (the documentary I watched last week for “Adventure”), wherein Laura Dekker, a fourteen-year-old girl from Holland, drops out of school so she can achieve her dream of sailing around the world solo. Wei Minzhi understands that education is the only thing they have, and, completely without resources, experience, education, or support, goes on a journey that renders Maidentrip frankly indulgent.

Not only is Not One Less a narrative without the fuss, without the press, and without the capitalistic individualism driving a teenager to abandon other responsibilities, but because the actors are all non-professionals playing versions of themselves within a neorealist filming style, reality and fiction are blurred into a highly applicable and metaphorical narrative pertaining to all individuals caught in a bureaucratic system of inequality and poverty. This gives Not One Less great documentary power in portraying a hopeless situation and the gloriously persevering mindset that is able to conquer it.