Stratum 1: The Visitors 地层1: 来客

The UCLA International Institute presents the film, "Stratum 1: The Visitors," as part of their 2014 China Onscreen Biennial: Spectrum.

Spectrum
West Coast Premiere     2013

Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Editor/Composer: Cong Feng
Producer: Wang Lidong, Cong Feng.
Cast: Fan Yuansheng, Tong Dazhuang
MPEG-4, color, in Mandarin w/ English s/t, 127 min.

Stratum 1: The Visitors is possibly the most original in a series of films addressing the pervasive reality of ruins in contemporary China – as illustrated by Wang Bing’s tracking shots, Jia Zhangke’s montage sequences, fictions by Ying Liang or Wang Quan’an, documentaries by Ou Ning, Shu Haolun, Cui Zi’en or the US anthropologist JP Sniadecki. Piles of rubble, half-standing buildings with empty windows, crumbling factories, vacant lots littered with gravel and the pitiful remnants of previous domestic lives are now a most common Chinese spectacle – be they the result of aggressive “urban renewal” or violent displacement / relocation of rural populations.

Cong Feng has built a compelling structure in two parts mirroring each other, with fictional and documentary elements running through them. In Part A, two men (Fan Yuansheng, Tong Dazhuang) – credited as “tour guides-actors-experience providers” – meet in an abandoned building and share memories of their past lives, then roam into the night. In Part B, they return to the site, which is now being destroyed by bulldozers. Part A is “a stage,” while Part B documents the demolition of this stage. The “stratum” of the title refers to “the stable basis of society that no longer exists” as well as to the different layers of urban landscape piled on top of each other.

As Cong Feng functions as his own cinematographer, the status of the image is questioned as well: in a field of rubble, near a hill made of piled-up construction waste, the filmmaker is an “image scavenger,” partaking in the overall process of discarding / recycling. He creates a complex visual texture of crumbling walls, graffiti, discarded lives and occasional violence, both evoking and obliterating the passing of time. Ruins are the end of history, they stand as signposts / scars of what is no more, yet they are also the mark of human labor, economic activity and suggest a leap towards the unknown. Stratum 1’s captivating experimental strategy was awarded the Jury Award at the 2013 Beijing Independent Film Festival. – Bérénice Reynaud

In another life, Cong Feng (b. 1972, Chengde, Hebei Province) worked for the weather bureau. He also published two books of poetry: Invisible Train and Masmediacspoeshitry. He directed the Italy of Gansu Trilogy, which includes Religion (2006), Doctor Ma’s Country Clinic (2008) that won many awards including the NETPAC award in Berlin and the Directors’ Guild of Japan Award in Yamagata, and The Unfinished History of Life (2010). His works have been shown at the Berlin and Rotterdam International Film Festivals, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, and across the independent film festival circuit in China. He is an editor of the online magazine Film Auteur.

Preceded by:
What Happened in Past Dragon Year

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