A Marble Travelogue

Blocks of white marble mined in a Greek quarry are shipped to China, where they are turned into Hellenistic-style statues and columns and sold for the Chinese and world markets. The leftover is processed into fridge magnets and other souvenirs that happy Chinese tourists are eager to buy and take back to their homeland. The filmmaker Sean Wang, with his witty camera, takes us along the marble odyssey around the world, asking whether such concepts as authenticity and tradition in this absurd economic circle, from the mining of raw materials to manufacturing and retail, have become redundant.