All Still Orbit  /  IEC Long  /  Poet on a Business Trip

This screening takes place at the Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles.

Los Angeles premieres!

All Still Orbit  (Croatia/Serbia/Germany/Brazil, 2015)

A philosophical-historical investigation of Brasília, the planned city capital of Brazil that was built over 41 months in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and the small, impoverished town just outside its limits that (literally) sank after its founding. Tracing its origins from Saint Don Bosco’s (possibly apocryphal) dream in 1883, the filmmakers use a lyrical voiceover and hyper-tinted digital images of the city and its environs to question the idealism of the city’s international style.

DCP, color, in Italian and Portuguese with English subtitles, 22 min. Director: Dane Komljen, James Lattimer.

IEC Long  (Portugal/China, 2014)

Simultaneously echoing and extending themes and techniques present in their prior collaborations (The Last Time I Saw Macao, Mahjong), João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata turn their attention toward a derelict fireworks factory in Macao and its environs. Interweaving archival footage, photographs, figurine-based reconstructions, oral testimony, slices of contemporary life, and the nearly omnipresent sound of fireworks exploding in the distance, the filmmakers have crafted another multivalent and eclectic exploration of memory, place, and the politics underlying both.

DCP, color, in Chinese with English subtitles, 31 min. Director: João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata.

Poet on a Business Trip  (China, 2015)

Originally shot back in September of 2002, this lo-fi, black-and-white adventure across China’s remote Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is both bawdy and astute. First seen mid-coitus in Beijing, the titular scribe Shu decides to go on a “business trip”—which consists of drinking, eating, and chewing the fat with truck drivers and fellow bus passengers in seedy barbecue joints and hotels. Against inhospitable, scarcely populated plateaus and bumpy roads, his experiences yield 16 poems that sardonically capture his journey. Grand Prize winner of the 2015 Jeonju International Film Festival.

DCP, b/w, in Mandarin and Uyghur with English subtitles, 103 min. Director: Ju Anqi.