The 78-year-old Yang Guanghai was the cameraman on the earlier Kucong people documentary. He said his crew from a state-owned film studio was asked by their leaders to record the production methods, customs and social structure of the Kucong people's communities. Over the course of a year's shooting, Yang's crew had to overcome harsh living conditions in primitive forests. Shooting was suspended for three months after Yang caught malaria and was sent back to Beijing for treatment.

"Back then, we attached the utmost importance to our work. We would rather die at our posts than disappoint our leaders and the audience," said Yang, who participated in the filming of six documentaries on ethnic minorities.

A new life

Ouyang Bin, Director and cameraman of The Sixth Resettlement, said he was unsure whether he could find the offspring of the people in the old documentary before shooting the film. The Kucong people number about 40,000 and they move frequently in the mountains at an average altitude of 1,800 meters. But it didn't take Ouyang long to find the protagonist for his documentary, Bai Yaomei.

"In a chat after watching our old documentary, Bai told me that if she was lucky, her family could move into a new village at the foot of a mountain under a government-subsidized resettlement program," said Ouyang. "We thought the resettlement process might turn into something interesting."

Bai's 96-year-old mother, Ma Ermei, said in the new documentary that the government's resettlement programs for the Kucong people failed five times after the old film was shot in 1958. People in Bai's village moved back to the primitive forests each time after the government moved them into a new government-built village because most of them lacked skills necessary to live out of their mountain homes.

The situation changed in the 1990s as the Kucong people voluntarily moved out of the forests to become farmers. Like other families in the village, Bai raised rice for food and cardamom for sale. Collecting wild herbs from steep mountain slopes like her ancestors now only accounts for a small part of Bai's family income. Almost every family in Bai's village of around 130 households has a small hydropower-generated TV set from which they see the outside world.

The documentary's main story follows Bai as she tries to be among the first batch of families moving into the new village, even by taking out loans with 40 percent interest rates to pay for the new housing. Compared to her old mountain village, which was a four-hour walk from the nearest road, the new village is right next to a road and close to a market. The house is equipped with electricity and running water.

Bai Zhengming, Bai's son-in-law, is part of a new generation of Kucong people who readily accept a modern life at the cost of losing old mountain survival skills. Although the young father still taught his sons how to build a field mouse trap with tree branches, a living skill passed down for generations, he insisted on sending his elder son to school. He told his mother-in-law that only by learning to read could his son avoid being cheated in payment. Bai said none of her four children knows as many mountain herbs as she does.

Fifty years ago, the Kucong people lived in an egalitarian society without any private property. In the 2008 documentary, Bai's fellow villagers are shown stealing half of her family's cardamom harvest from the field. And the Kucong people's economy ever felt the effects of the global financial crisis, which triggered a slump in cardamom prices at the village market and disrupted her plan to pay off her debts by the end of the year.

"I try to show my audience that social evolution and changes are never easy for individuals involved," said Ouyang, who spent five months shooting the documentary. One scene shot while Bai was selling a piece of wild herb she dug from the mountains at a market, showed that she was too shy to bargain with the buyer. In the end, she was paid only 20 yuan ($2.90) rather than the several hundred yuan true value of the herb. The audience can plainly see the sadness and helplessness on Bai's face.