Directed by Libbie D. Cohn and J.P Sniadecki
A mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind window into modern China, People's Park is an exhilarating single shot documentary that immerses viewers in an unbroken journey through a famous urban park in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
People's Park was produced at Harvard's groundbreaking Sensory Ethnography Lab, which has been responsible for some of the most critically-acclaimed, envelope-pushing documentaries of recent years (including Sweetgrass, Leviathan, and the upcoming Manakamana)
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.
A sensory meditation on cinematic time and space, People's Park offers a fresh gaze at public interaction, leisure and self-expression in today's China.
Reviews
~ "An unblinking nonfiction look ¡ª captured in one uninterrupted, extraordinarily stable and fluid shot ¡ª at contemporary China or at least the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people crowded into one Sichuan city park. The directors¡plunge you into a human tributary on which you drift and flow and occasionally stop dead, only to rise up and up and up in the astonishing, infectiously joyous finale." - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
~ "An exuberant mingling of street theater and anything-can-happen documentary." - Dennis Lim, The New York Times
~ "A provocative example of pure cinema and the most dynamic exploration of the cinematic time-space continuum I've seen since The Clock." - J.Hoberman, Artinfo
Awards
~ Winner, Best Cinematography Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival
~ Winner, Gian Paolo Paoli award for Best Anthropological Film, Festival dei Popoli
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