"In People’s Park, the camera doesn’t pause for any extended period of time to focus on one individual park-goer but, rather anthropologically, collects a wide swath of park life." (Jonas Jacobs, Point of View Magazine)
After the screening there will be a Q and A with J.P. Sniadecki.
About the film:
PEOPLE’S PARK is a 78-minute single shot documentary that immerses viewers in an unbroken journey through a famous urban park in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. The film explores the dozens of moods, rhythms, and pockets of performance coexisting in tight proximity within the park’s prismatic social space, capturing waltzing couples, mighty sycamores, karaoke singers, and buzzing cicadas in lush 5.1 surround sound. A sensory meditation on cinematic time and space, PEOPLE’S PARK offers a fresh gaze at public interaction, leisure and self-expression in China. Co-Sponsored by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative and the Experimental Ethnographies Townsend Working Group.
About J.P. Sniadecki:
J.P. Sniadecki, assistant professor of radio/television/film, is a filmmaker and anthropologist active in the United States and China. An affiliate of the Sensory Ethnography Lab, he holds a PhD in Social Anthropology with Media from Harvard. His films have screened at festivals such as the Berlinale, Locarno, New York, AFI, Edinburgh, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Viennale, Vancouver, BAFICI, RIDM, Cinema du Reel, Riviera Maya, FICUNAM, and DOChina as well as at venues such as New York’s MoMA and Guggenheim, Vienna’s MAC, Beijing’s UCCA, the 2014 Shanghai Biennale, and the 2014 Whitney Biennale.