[Marxism] Still Life

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Opening tomorrow at the IFC Center in New York, Jia Zhang-ke’s “Still 
Life” (Sanxia haoren) is a no-holds-barred assault on the dubious 
progress wrought by the Three Gorges Dam. Shot on location in the town 
of Fengjie, which was demolished and deluged by the Yangtze River, it is 
one of the most radical-minded films coming out of China to date and 
takes its place alongside “Blind Shaft,” a movie about coal miners. 
Indeed, one of the two main characters is Sanming, a coal miner who has 
come to Fengjie in search of a daughter he hasn’t seen in 16 years. The 
moment he arrives he takes a job demolishing houses in Fengjie.

One evening after work Sanming chats with a fellow worker about their 
reactions to the immense changes taking place around them. His comrade 
rebukes him by saying that he is too “nostalgic”. As irrefutable proof 
of this, we hear Sanming play a downloaded ring tone on his cell phone, 
which is an old Red Army anthem—a perfect symbol of the paradoxes of 
Chinese society today: in the name of Communism, a brutal forced march 
toward capitalist modernization proceeds apace.

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/still-life/

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