World Cinema Spotlights is pleased to present an online screening of Made in Ethiopia (2024), directed by Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu, accompanied by a live conversation with the scholar and curator Dr How Wee Ng, chaired by Dr Syed Haider.
World Cinema Spotlights presents in partnership with the Centre for Social Justice Research, University of Westminster and New Area Studies Research Centre, University of East Anglia.
Made in Ethiopia offers a rigorously observed account of Chinese industrial expansion in Ethiopia through the development of a vast industrial park. Rather than framing the story through familiar narratives of geopolitical rivalry or developmental triumph, the film attends to everyday encounters between Ethiopian workers, Chinese managers and state actors, allowing complex relations of labour, aspiration and power to emerge gradually.
The accompanying conversation with How Wee Ng will place the film within broader debates on Chinese cinema, documentary practice and decolonial approaches to film curation and pedagogy. Ng’s recent article, “Decolonising China on screen: curating cinemas of the Sinosphere for the university classroom”, provides a particularly resonant framework for engaging with Made in Ethiopia. In this work, Ng argues for moving beyond nation centred and exceptionalist models of Chinese cinema, instead foregrounding relational, transregional and historically situated perspectives.
By pairing Made in Ethiopia with Ng’s scholarship, this event invites audiences to consider how documentary form shapes knowledge about China and its global entanglements. The discussion will explore how films circulate within educational and cultural contexts and how decolonial thinking might unsettle dominant narratives. This focus speaks directly to the aims of World Cinema Spotlights, which seeks to cultivate attentive spectatorship while creating spaces for dialogue that bridge academic research and public engagement.
The online format of the screening reflects an ongoing commitment of this project to transnational exchange, enabling participation across geographical and institutional boundaries. Kinema’s platform allows for collective viewing while preserving the intimacy of focused engagement, underscoring the belief that world cinema is not simply a category of films but a practice of encounter. This event thus positions Made in Ethiopia not only as an object of analysis, but as a catalyst for shared reflection on how cinema can help us think critically about global processes and our own situated ways of seeing.
Location
Room UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW
About the speakers
How Wee Ng
How Wee Ng is senior lecturer at University of Westminster, specialising in cultural practices and production in the Sinosphere. He is also co-founder and board member of the Association for Curators and Programmers of Asian Cinemas (ACPAC). Selected publications include monograph The Chinese Censorship Discourse on Television Dramas (Routledge, 2026) and article “Working-class Masculinity in Postsocialist China (2024).
Syed Haider
Syed Haider is Lecturer in World Cinemas at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the founder of World Cinema Spotlights, a series dedicated to exploring curatorial practices around film screening, fostering conversation, and showcasing academic research linked to specific screenings. His research focuses on Muslim representation and the construction and circulation of Islam in Hindi cinema. Currently working on his first monograph, he has published in journals and edited collections, including ‘Shootings in Orlando: Terrorism, Toxic Masculinity or Both?’ and ‘Sufi Aesthetics and the Making of Islam in Bollywood’.
