MEISHI STREET

At the end of SPLITTING, a 1974 film recording of a building “cut” radical sculptor and architect Gordon Matta-Clark made to an abandoned family home in suburban New Jersey, the audience is told that the work was “demolished for urban ‘renewal’.” SPLITTING thus becomes an afterimage of a site-specific and self-destructive artistic thesis, but one that is nonetheless arresting in its visual expressiveness and solemn beauty. Conversely, in MEISHI STREET, Zhang Jinli fights tooth and nail to save his restaurant from demolition in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Given a digital video camera by U-teque Collective member Ou Ning to document his efforts, Zhang turns the lens on himself as he makes and hangs protest banners outside his restaurant and visits neighbors, projecting the voice of his Dazhalan neighborhood into a condemned future.

Preceded by: Gordon Matta-Clark SPLITTING 1974, 11 min, Super-8mm-to-digital, silent

Total running time: ca. 100 min.

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!