(JB) Marina Foxley showed the first part of her “Impressions of China” programme yesterday, and I’d like to write some lines on my two favorites - “The Bridge” by Xu Xin (2007) and “Terrace” by Song Di (2006) . “The Bridge” is a non-narrative documentary on the border to the cinematic essay, comparable perhaps to the films NYC and Belgrade films we had seen on Monday, but with a decisive political undertone. The film’s subject is the gigantic Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, which is not only a important part of Nanjing’s infrastructure, but also a kind of monument to the Chinese People’s Republic’s engineering potential. Xu Xin’s film, though, ignores the heroic aspect of the bridge, focussing rather on small scenes of people somehow associated with the bridge or simply passing by, like a young tourist couple taking pictures, some workers whiling away time in their cabin or a man in a raincoat trying to cross bridge at a traffic light, which – judging from the display attached to the lights – is set to just 7 seconds, so crossing it within the allocated time frame and not getting stuck in the middle of the road seems like a veritable feat in itself. Obviously – besides taking pictures for your album –, the bridge is not intended for any kind of true interaction between architecture and the people; a problem often plaguing institutions and structures in political systems which have to put the identifier “People’s” into their denomination, as the connection between “people” and “society” might be eventually overlooked otherwise. There is an irony to the social realist statue depicting the traditional warrior/worker/doctrinaire standing on the side of the bridge, shown at the beginning of the film – it should have rather been a miniature replica of the bridge itself, or maybe the Chinese mainland (think of Ai Weiwei’s sarcastic “Map of China”, carved from the remnants of a destroyed historical temple), instead of any kind of even aesthetically & politically streamlined individual. Unsurprisingly, the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is a popular suicide venue in China; Xu Xiu states a number of 2000 people at the end of the film, a supposedly unauthorised but still shocking statistic.

Suicide is the subject matter of Song Di’s film, too; however, this one is entirely fictional and decidedly narrative. In 12 minutes, Song Di develops the heart-warming story of a school-girl giving a lesson in practical escapism to a suicidal elderly man on the brink of hurling himself from a tower block. Just as the film seems to get overpowered by its feel-good magical realism tone, the story takes a rather tragic turning; I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s say that this isn’t exactly Mary Poppins. It isn’t Suicide Circle or a Takashi Miike movie, either; the tragicomical setting rather reminded me of the fine traditions of Czech or Finnish cinema, or, to build a bridge to a different art form, to the romantically infused accounts of utter failure by artists like Urs Lüthi or Peter Land. There is no false melodrama in Song Di’s short, but rather a kind of dandyesque defiance of the inevitable; the protagonist rigs himself up in swimming trunks and goggles for his attempt at the final jump.

Thursday’s “Strange Stories” compilation had its share of unfortunate deaths, too; firstly, there was Erik Urlings’ “Knäbelflocken” (2007), an utterly bizarre and rather indescribable short which seemed like a crossover between a gangster movie, a Dada performance and a free-mason initiation ritual, set in the ruins of a small countryside chapel; then, Lucas Figueroa’s “Boletos por Favor” (“The Tickets, Please”) from 2007, with a Harold-Pinter-style take on the utter horror of fare dodging. Again, the plot takes a couple of twists, and I wouldn’t like to spoil the fun for anyone; so try to catch it yourself if you haven’t been able to attend Thursday’s screening. On a side note – while the film was set entirely inside a moving train, and, more specifically, the already rather dubious space between two compartments, Figueroa had included some CGI special effect shots of the train passing through a kind of post-apocalyptic but retro-looking landscape, which I found remarkable because they were virtually superfluous for the plot itself, but still added an additional sense of style to the film.

Finally, there was an underlying tragedy and the presumptive doom of one of the protagonists of André Werner’s “The Eyes of Mankind” (2007). While there was a considerable amount of archival cinematic snippets involved in Werner’s take on expressionist Sci-Fi drama (think Murnau here), it had far more original footage than the afore-mentioned “Flash”, and a clear-cut and highly condensed plot. The nostalgic effect of the aesthetics and narrative structure was subtly undermined by the plot, which was essentially about, well, the triumphant victory of the moving image over its printed predecessor. I’d love to see a similarly made full feature film by Werner, but I suppose it would take years of work simply browsing the archives for adequate material (and, let’s face it, expressionist film-making’s narratives might indeed have deserved some radical compression in their own time, too, so maybe 14 minutes is just about the right length, after all).

Bye for now - JB

The Bridge
(Xu Xin, 2007, 16 min.)
The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was built in 1968 and was atthe time one of the biggest Communist realizations. Accordingto a survey, between 2003 and 2004, 234 people havecommitted suicide by jumping from this heavily congestedbridge.
Independent documentarist, Xu Xin focuses on the grass-roots existences in China, especially the minorities and socialvulnerable groups. To him, the act of documenting itself is a way of engaging in the construction of history.

Terrace
(Song Di, 2006, 12 min.)
A man of a certain age is about to jump off the roof of adilapidated building, then a young girl appears…
First film by Song Di, postgraduated at the Beijing FilmAcademy (Directing Department). Director’s assistant ofthe independent film “Seafood” and of “South of theClouds”, both directed by Zhu Wen.

(S.S.) A little backtracking to do here…I’d like to start by talking about the fascinating lecture Merce Rodrigo Garcia gave about her research as an architect into the virtual representations of inhabited space in Japanese independent film. The idea of a Spanish architect studying Japanese independent films and scouring them for traces of inspiration about what it means to inhabit Japan is mind-boggling in and of itself. The fact that MRG can make such a coherent argument out of this practice is down right incredible. I think the key argument for her has something to do with the idea of built space versus the idea of inhabited space. Cities that change very rapidly, like Tokyo, have a lot of flexibility when it comes to the way the population uses space. There is this organic, real time, fluid approach to using space that is a model built by the everyday people that populate Tokyo and then there is this prescribed top-down model of building space which begins with some megalomaniacal architect and a lot of money and ends with a bunch of people who feel trapped by their working and/or living quarters.

 The film clips MRG showed represented both sides of this architectural dialectic. On the “built” side of things the film clips from Crazy Family (80’s) and Tokyo Fist (90’s) represented the suffocation of the average man by the oppressive architecture of Tokyo in the midst of an economic boom. Crazy Family told the story of an upwardly mobile family who move from the city to an American style suburban house on the outskirts of Tokyo. Once settled there, the family becomes obsessed with their individual privacy and they slowly disappear from each others lives culminating in an absurd parody of suburban life. The family leaves their home in the suburbs and takes up a nomadic existence in between two highways. In this primitive base camp, the family unites once more. The fact that their peaceful existence occurs in a space that is not recognized as a home speaks to MRG’s notion that inhabited space is less suffocating than built space.

In Tokyo Fist, a Japanese version of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, or Fight Club, a man’s subjectivity is taken over by his urban environs. He mounts the platform for the subway, climbs the endless stairs to his cookie cutter apartment, and works in his cubicle like everyone else. At some point, he snaps and tries to destroy his environment. He pounds at the walls with a pipe and exasperates himself in the name of liberating himself from his oppressed lifestyle.

The built landscape of Tokyo in the 90’s melts into the virtual realities of the current decade. Tokyo has become a place for fetishized subcultures to flourish. In the film Peep Show, two  seemingly unconnected subcultures function as alternative landscapes and define spaces in the city for their purposes. The first subculture is the Gothic Lolita fashion subculture, most prevalent in the Shibuya district. These women dress like Victorian dolls with Mary Jane shoes, ruffle dresses, pinafores and knee-high stockings. The effect is sexy and ridiculous at the same time. These women congregate in certain quarters of the Shibuya district providing the rest of the city with a chance to check out their world. The film explores the notion of bifurcated personas these women experience when they dress up as something or someone they may or may not really be. The notion of costumes and hiding within them in order to evade reality is a theme throughout the film. On the other end of this virtual coin are the Otaku, a real group of Tokyo-ites who are so socially withdrawn into their computer worlds that they never leave their rooms. They communicate via the Internet and find the greater physical world exhausting.

MRG sees the inhabited spaces of Tokyo as being linked to a historical and cultural process so for her, the fact that subcultures occupy virtual space is just as important to the architecture of the city as when they occupy actual space.  The fact that Tokyo shifts to accommodate new cultures and identities gives it a virtual quality as well. And when the streets are flooded with Gothic Lolita’s, there is a carnival like atmosphere which exists both physically and virtually. Space is per-formative, MRG reminds us. This is very clear in the 16mm film Private Novel, in which a filmmaker shoots his life, his friends and and his surroundings over a ten year period. The city takes on a haunting quality under his gaze, especially when he films Emperor Hirohito’s funeral.

In conclusion, MRG suggested that the tactics of independent film could be beneficial to architects. Viewing the way people use space, virtual or otherwise, is a more useful process than contracting to build giant space sucking monsters that only serve to oprress their inhabitants. 

(S.S.) Marina Foxley’s second night of films from China took up the personal rather than the political. The first film, Night Bus, a love story about two people in side by side trains that feel a connection inspite of the isolating and alienating environment they must travel through. When they finally get off their respective busses and meet in person, the man is lame and short. He is so embarrassed that he starts to cry and the woman, who was crying on her bus earlier, cheers him up by making a funny face. The two walk off together into the artificially lit night. The idea of facade and the revelation that no one is perfect seems especially poignant for China right now, or for any country that is obsessed with expanding and gaining power. It is the small, naked intimate moments between imperfect people that makes living anywhere worthwhile. And no matter how perfect we pretend to be or strive to be, we will always have our shortcomings.

In the second film, Wanna Sleep, the modern world encroaches on two people who are exhausted by the pace of Shanghai life to the point where they can’t even catch some z’s. What is striking about this film, from my limited knowledge of Chinese domestic life, is just how normal everything looks. Laptops, big TV’s, Ipods, futons, breakfast smoothies, bad Ikea lamps, and alarmcloks are everywhere. The isolation of modern living is evident with just a few key purchases. At the end of the film, the message from the filmmaker appears. THe translation reads something like, “Wanna sleep? The power to sleep is like the power to have a good life, it’s in your hands.” The message is that the speed of Shanghai can be resisted. You can choose to slow down and get some rest.  A powerful message indeed as it is midnight in Berlin and I would like to rest myself! I will be back tomorrow with the last two films from Marina Foxley.

-S.S.