Extend your arm, bear the pain of a needle.Then flex your arm, 50 Yuan is earned.

This was one of many jingles created by blood banks in China, which rural people committed to memory. But due to unsafe practices, thousands of impoverished Chinese contract HIV and other diseases through contaminated blood, often leaving behind orphaned children to raise each other or depend on compassionate families for support.

Hong Kong-born filmmaker Ruby Yang and award-winning producer Thomas Lennon followed these orphans in the rural villages of Yingzhou District for one year. One of them, Gau Jun, was abandoned by his family and refuses to utter a word. He is a victim of social stigma and a government that has failed to support its citizens. Neighbors prevent their children from playing with him, and his own extended family rejects him, fearing their own children will be isolated.

The Blood of Yingzhou District is a stunningly shot, sensitive portrait of a hidden AIDS epidemic in a country not commonly associated with the disease. The film follows Gau Jun silently as he becomes part of a family and is accepted for the first time as the beautiful, wondrous child that he is."--Nina Gilden Seavey, http://www.silverdocs.com

Winner, 2007 Academy Awards, Best Documentary Short