White Light Cinema at the Nightingale — Friday, 8pm
Part cinema verité, part city symphony, part essay on humans living
in an urban reality, and part celebration of digital egalitarianism,
Huang's film is surprisingly cohesive and concise in it's focus. Casting
the city of Guangzhou (the least famous city of 10 million people in
the world) as the dominant manipulator of human behavior, the filmmaker
allows the viewer to make connections between the chaotic behavior of
a scam artist pretending to be hit by a car, a group of men swimming
in protest of an oppressive government, a black market dealer of bear
paws and frozen anteaters, and countless other actual occurrences that
are at once absurd and commonplace. Compiled from what is purported
to be over 1000 hours of footage shot by amateur videographers, DISORDER
is a seesaw between anxiety and gleeful wonderment. The sequences are
bridged by asynchronous sound, bleeding from one event to the next,
and the most common through-line is a never-ending parade of apathetic
authority figures. “It will lead to paperwork, we have bigger problems”
would be an apt alternate title for this modern masterpiece, if that
didn't sidestep the greater argument being made here. By shedding light
on the magnificent number of situations people get into for which there
is no logical resolution, Huang renders these occurrences mundane. The
man seeking relief from a health inspector for the roach in his meal
is just as crazy as the man threatening to jump of a bridge unless the
police help him get relief (from what we never really know). Life as
a system of orderly events is not just an illusion, but is the most
illogical thought of all. (2010, 58 min, Video) JH - Cine-File.info
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