Documentaries

Chaiqian

Demolition
J.P. Sniadecki
USA, China 2008
62 min
V'08

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Demolition is a portrait of migrant labor, urban spaces and ephemeral relationships at a demolition site in the center of Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province. At the edge of the site, the workers have set up their barracks; some of them have even brought along their families. Thus a small community has formed within the city: They do their washing, cook and eat, and in the evening the men sometimes venture into the brightly lit city, only to be reprimanded by a young female police officer that a gathering of a larger number of people would not be allowed here. The presence of filmmaker Sniadecki does not only become important in moments like this: Again and again, the workers approach the «man from Harvard», inviting him for lunch or explaining to him where it is allowed to film and where not. In the end, when the workers have left again, an empty field remains; they have literally cleared the place for the Chinese economic miracle.

This film is screened together with Songhua.

Credits
  • J.P. Sniadecki
  • J.P. Sniadecki
  • J.P. Sniadecki
  • Ernst Karel
J.P. Sniadecki

J.P. Sniadecki 407 Conant Hall, 36 Oxford Street Cambridge, MA 02138, USA T 269 267 2335 jpsniad@fas.harvard.edu

J.P. Sniadecki
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