The Iron Ministry (2015), with Director J.P Sniadecki and UCLA Professor Robert Chi.

Director J.P. Sniadecki spent three years filming on Chinese trains in order to capture the menagerie of nuances and fleeting encounters seen on the singular train ride experience depicted in this quietly observational, sensory documentary. Themes of humans and machinery, flesh and metal, haphazardly fated together for frequent and prolonged intervals are brought to vivid clarity.  Through Sniadecki’s careful camera’s eye, the abstract becomes the literal and vice versa. The train car’s accordion like connectors pull and squash under strain, much like the lives of its passengers. The transitory conversations range a wide variety of subjects, shedding light on the state of Chinese collective consciousness today. This uneasy cohabitation between moving steel and strangers on the move paints an insightful picture of what will soon be the largest train system in the world.

 

“Sniadecki offers a broadly impressionistic, sometimes humorous vision of China’s vast railway system.” Jay Weissberg, Variety

 

“A pungently immersive evocation of trailing on Chinese trains.” Hollywood Reporter

 

“Chinese society takes on metaphorical dimensions in (this) absorbing doc.” Eric Kohn, Indiewire

 

Director: J.P. Sniadecki

 

83 min./ Digital Projection

 

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TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/105047410