Kickstarter Project Funds Film About Chinese Citizen Journalists

We write a lot about startups who create apps and web services, but we don’t often get a chance to write about people who are making waves in the media space — especially in China. It’s there we find two citizen journalists – 27-year-old Zhou Shuguang (aka Zola) and 57-year-old ‘Tiger Temple’ – who have been working to tell stories that often get buried by state censors.

I’m not familiar with the latter, but having spent a few years in China and following the news there, I’d say that there are few bloggers as ballsy or as tech savvy as Zola. I’ve mentioned him in a few stories before, but over the years he has traveled around China and reported on various protests, riots, and other events. He has been detained and harassed by police before, and discouraged from continuing his reporting. And if that resume isn’t impressive enough, he hosts seminars in Beijing on new media technology as well.

A film is being made about Zola and Tiger, and money is being raised via Kickstarter to take care of post-production costs. While I haven’t heard much about Zola in the past year or so, I think this is certainly a project worth supporting.

The film, entitled High Tech, Low Life, has been selected to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this month. There are only six days left, and as I write this, the Kickstarter project has only raised just over half of its $23,500 goal.

You can check out more information about the project below, and decide for yourself if you’d like to pitch in.

[Via @anxiaostudio on Twitter]