Coming to theatres today, Friday, August 21: THE IRON MINISTRY
JP Sniadecki’s immersion into China’s railway system made its debut at Locarno last year. Since then, it has screened at the NYFF, Rotterdam, Vancouver, Edinburgh, Camden, Chicago, DocLisboa, Viennale, CPH:DOX, San Deigo Asian, RIDM, Cork, Ambulante, and Vilnius, among several others.
Though filmed between 2011 and 2013, Sniadecki erases any indications of specific time or place in his presentation, suggesting instead a singular, if non-contiguous, journey to and from unidentified stations, but which nevertheless offers quiet commentary on contemporary China. After an extended introduction in which the audience only hears mechanical noises against a blackness, the filmmaker offers disorienting close-ups of the connectors between train cars before widening out to showcase the far-from delectable wares of a butcher who’s set up an improvised stall. From there, Sniadecki traverses the expanse of the locomotive, lingering occasionally to record conversations between passengers, including some surprisingly outspoken thoughts on politics and the economy. Welcome moments of humor, notably an early scene in which a precocious young boy performs a scathing satirical impression of a conductor’s welcome, contrast with longer, drawn out sequences, as when a snack car vendor sells his items through car after car, answering the same question over and over. Like the work of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab with which the director is associated, this is spectatorship as experience, and while not for every viewer, it offers an immediacy that is both memorable and fleeting at the same time.
what (not) to doc 