This film is a record of Chang’an Boulevard, captured in a sequence of measured distances along its entire 45 kilometers. At each measured increment, the artist records a single, one-minute-long frame. The whole film is composed of 608 one-minute segments. The length of the film is 10 hours and 13 minutes.
Beijing, the capital of China for over 600 years, has a prime architectural orientation and order to its urban fabric. The structure of the city is bisected by Chang’an Boulevard along its east-west axis. After 1949, this boulevard and the heart of the city, Tiananmen Square, became China’s main cultural political center and landmark.
The film records the city through the transformation of its urban landscape. The work reveals Beijing as an organic whole, capturing the city’s rhythms, social structure, cityscape, socialist planned economy, capitalist market and political power center as pieces of a multi-layered urban collage. (Ai Weiwei Studio)
Film details
- Country of production
- China
- Year
- 2004
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2012
- Length
- 613"
- Medium/Format
- File
You may also like this
-
When the Bough Breaks
Experienced documentary filmmaker becomes involved in the lives of the children of a family trying to survive in their jury rigged shanty stuck in
-
The Road Toward Jokhang
Ostensibly merely a brief, amusing portrayal of the culture clash between Tibetan pilgrims and Chinese tourists, but in China even just the word Ti
-
Shattered
Xu Tong continues his enervating, sometimes controversial reporting on the morals of the Chinese underclass. In the lead role, an 80-year-old, reti