Tiexi Qu - Chinese Indie Doc (1)

Tiexi Qu is a surprising documentary as it lasts 9 hours and the question of time, the perception of time flowing, in the film and beyond the film, are interesting to examine.

West of the Tracks (Tiexi Qu) 2003, 9 hours in 3 parts, by Wang Bing
Awarded at Yamagata International Documentary Festival, the Festival 3 Continents.....

The Tiexi district is a gigantic industrial complex in Shenyang in China's north-east. It was established during the Japanese occupation in the 20s and transformed into a highly populated industrial area. From the Nineties, the Tiexi Qu district which received support from the State before gradually dismantles to become a forgotten zone where the factories are closing down one by one and where the working class area must be demolished, thus, dislodging its inhabitants.

This long documentary takes us away to this now decaying area and is divided into three parts entitled “Rust”, “Remnants” and “Rails”. They are independent of each other and were shot in DV between 1999 and 2001. Wang Bing stayed over there during these years while living near these workers and inhabitants.
In the three films, the camera does not imposed itself and Wang Bing does not use interviews nor the voice over; he rarely directly intrudes himself.
The camera is thus present and absent at the same time because it keeps a certain distance and seems to be forgotten by the people who are being filmed.
Sometimes they tell a story describing a period of their life or show their worries, questionings and anguish concerning their dubious future.

Each part constitutes a film to itself and develops a well defined subject in a specific and different place.
In the first part, entitled Rust, Wang Bing sticks to the every day life of the last workers of the last factories and in particular of the copper foundries and the last blast furnaces. The second part, Remnants follows the inhabitants of the working area, the Rainbow Row, while in the third part, Tracks, Wang Bing accompanies the employees of the railways company which ensures the transport of the raw materials and of the manufactured goods out of Shenyang.

Each part is also conceived and structured differently.
Thus, if the first part offers a linear approach by showing the daily life of several workers in these factories, the second is more detached in a sense that it displays several stories which could almost become a fiction, finally, the third returns even more closely and more psychologically in the people's personal life and centers on the Old Du and his son.

Each one borrows a singular story, and yet, the stories are intersected in the real time, so that the same time or the same period of time can be found in another part but at a different place. That was possible, technically, thanks to the result of the work of the editing, and, physically and in real time, thanks to the rail network which, thus, enabled him to move more easily.
This conception to undertake a cubist form of time results also from the choice of a slow but never long pace. The seasons ravel in front of our eyes but they are elastic since some seem to stretch themselves such as winter whereas others are curtailed such as spring or are simply hardly seen, even almost non-existent such as the warmer seasons. However the years are passing away and we go from one year to another knowing that we had already seen the year that has just disappeared and will see it again later in another part.


Tiexi Qu : West of tracks is a monumental film and whose three parts are equally well made, each one with their unique strength.
Wang Bing succeeds in erasing the duration of this (or these) floating film(s) and in restructuring the time by several manners also :
- the fact of dividing the film into three independent parts (with 3 subtitles evoking the notion of time), each one focusing on a specific theme
- adopting a cinematic and narrative structure which is suitable for each part (the two longer parts that last over three hours are divided into two parts and the last part is centered on a character)
- the insertion of the travelings along the railways which gives a certain pace to the film (as time is motion)
- the real filmed like a fiction, the gap between fiction and documentary has become more blur.

The nine hours which summarize not only two years lived in Tiexi, but, which also wrap up several human lives, and more generally, a whole past full of History, become necessary and finally inevitable in order to seize, through this slow process of dismantlement and decay, the repercussions from the economic changes in China, but also the decline and the end of an era of the Chinese History.



Related:

• Tie Xi Qu : West of Tracks

What is Contemplating Cinema?

What is contemplative cinema?
It must be recognized that the question has a two-fold answer. Who contemplates? The film contemplates; the viewer contemplates. They are different contemplations, for the film's contemplation is given to the viewer's experience for the sake of his or her own contemplation while viewing, as well as for his or her reflection upon the film. Contemplative cinema is a mode of thinking, is the thinking of film, in film, filmed, a direct thought of which we are incapable of, for we can only represent in thought. Contemplative cinema is more, and less, than our contemplation. More, because it assembles and produces time and image — and we cannot do that. We cannot create a time within time, for we are already living in time and our mode of being offers no possibility of stepping outside of the time that we are in, and which unfolds through us is it carries us. No, we cannot create time, or times, for we are subject to time. Film, as a subjectivity of image and time, creates its own time, in a time that it takes from us, or which it draws us into. Cinematic time is a synthetic time, a time realized through the effect of continuity engendered at 24 frames per second; it is also time as an effect of montage, of cuts and sequences arranged to produce a a direct experience of time: a temporal illusion of immediacy.
Cinema's subjectivity is its own, but in contemplative cinema it is given to us to contemplate. But in our contemplation of cinema, we can only reflect on it, can only think about it, that is, we cannot contemplate it without translating it first into a representational schema by which we then make conceptual associations around it. Cinema's own contemplation is direct; ours is indirect.
The early cinema was a reconfiguration of drama, of narrative story-telling for the camera, indirectly, instead of for the audience, directly. But its creation, film, is direct image and sound, unburdened by the instabilities of the stage, and the relations that an audience might take up to its actors, sets, and production. The production of film is invisible. It comes to us directly. And so its own contemplation, its own thought of time, of action, of space and movement, its own speed, rhythm, continuity, is already complete for us. Its production is invisible.
Cinema thinks as we cannot, for it can think its own world as it thinks. It is a perceptual thinking, directly in and through image, a thinking that precedes the invention of concepts and ideas, but which can arouse concepts and ideas as it suggests them by means of its perception. Cinematic thought, direct and in the image, is thinking as perception, perception that thinks and after which no amount of reflection is necessary to the film's essential creative act. Film thinks as in what it sees, but in seeing it has already finished, for it cannot compare, cannot reconsider, cannot think by analogy or reflect on its own ideas. It is the being of thought prior to reflection, direct and in the image. It is a thinking that cannot communicate, and yet we are often moved by its beauty or sublimity, but its gift and talent and for its effort to present us with better, more resonant, more sensible worlds. It will seem to conceal its reasons, on occasion, but in truth it has none, for it cannot but arouse our reasons, and those are something it knows nothing about. Cinema contemplates, directly, hermetically, within and unto itself. But if we are fortunate, and present, and contemplative, we will experience its sensibilities and be moved. And with the right cinema, we will be given a contemplation to contemplate, and from the cinematic contemplation we will be able to think further, to reflect on and through the film. For the film cannot. It cannot contemplate outside of itself, cannot become what it is not, cannot be other than what it already is. Its contemplation is complete, and we would be mistaken to make it contemplate what it has not given itself to contemplate. But if we did not contemplate the film, we would miss an opportunity to think new thoughts, to think the possibilities the film has offered us, and from which, moved, we might renew our being. The cinema is an outside that moves us to contemplation, if we take it in.

Ozu's Any-Space-Whatever, read through Gilles Deleuze

Marina, I was inspired by your post on Ozu, which is spot on, to type up a section from Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 2 book that deals with one of Ozu's particular contemplations, the "any-space-whatever." I think it's clear that Ozu's inventions are used again and again, though perhaps often only as a reference or gesture. Where Ozu's films contemplate space, later films contemplate Ozu? We have to think hard to see the difference, for in film, the distinction between an original image and the appearance of one is illegible in the image itself and is revealed only through the film's particular assemblage. A film might contemplate, or it might contemplate contemplation. Not all examples of contemplative cinema think original thoughts. Some might only reflect on contemplation, recollect periods of contemplation, or consider contemplation (only to abandon it). I think you'll like this:

"Although he was subject, from the outset, to the influence of certain American authors, Ozu built up in a Japanese context a body of work which was the first to develop pure optical and sound situations (even so he came quite late to the talkie, in 1936). The Europeans did not imitate him, but came back to him later via their own methods. He none the less remains the inventor of opsigns and sonsigns. The work borrows a trip/ballad form, train journey, taxi ride, bus trip, a journey by bicycle or on foot: the grandparents' return journey from the provinces to Tokyo, the girl's last holiday with her mother, an old man's jaunt... But the object is everyday banality taken as a family life in the Japanese house. Camera movements take place less and less frequently: tracking shots are slow, low 'blocs of movement'; the always low camera is usually fixed, frontal or at an unchanging angle: dissolves are abandoned in favor of the simple cut. What might appear to be a return to 'primitive cinema is just as much the elaboration of an astonishingly temperate modern style: the montage-cut, which will dominate modern cinema, is a purely optical passage or punctuation between images, working directly, sacrificing all synthetic effects. The sound is also affected, since the montage-cut may culminate in the 'one shot, one line' procedure borrowed from American cinema. But there, for instance, in Lubitsch, it was a matter of an action-image functioning as an index, whereas Ozu modifies the meaning of the procedure, which now shows the absence of plot: the action-image disappears in favor of the purely visual image of what a character is, and the sound image of what he says, completely banal nature and conservation constituting the essentials of the script (this is why the only things that count are the choice of the actors according to their physical and moral appearance, and the establishment of any dialogue whatever, apparently without a precise subject-matter. ....
It is clear that this method immediately presents idle periods, and leads to their increase in the course of the film. Of course, as the film proceeds, it might be thought that the idle periods are no longer important simply for themselves but recoup the effect of something important: the shot or the line would, on this view, be extended by a quite long silence or emptiness. But it is definitely not the case, with Ozu, that we get the remarkable and the ordinary, limit-situations and banal ones, the former having an effect on, or purposely insinuating themselves into, the latter. We cannot follow Paul Schrader when he contrasts, like two phases, 'the everyday' on one hand, and, on the other, 'the moment of decision', 'the disparity', which introduce an inexplicable break or emotion into daily banality. This distinction would seem strictly more valid for neo-realism. In Ozu, everything is ordinary or even banal, even death and the dead who are the object of a natural forgetting. ....
The philosopher Leibniz (who was not unaware of the existence of the Chinese philosophers) showed that the world is made up of series which are composed and which converge in a very regular way, according to ordinary laws. However, the series and the sequences are apparent to us only in small sections, and in a disrupted or mixed-up order, so that we believe in breaks, disparities and discrepancies as in things that are out of the ordinary.... It is just that we have to admit that, because the linkages of the terms in the series are naturally weak, they are constantly upset and do not appear in order. An ordinary term goes out of sequence, and emerges in the middle of another sequence of ordinary things in a relation which takes on the appearance of a strong moment, a remarkable or complex point. It is men who upset the regularity of series, the continuity of the universe. There is a time for life, a time for death, a time for the mother, a time for the daughter, but men mix them up, make them appear in disorder, set them up in conflicts. This is Ozu's thinking: life is simple, and man never stops complicating it by 'disturbing still water'....
Daily life allows only weak sensory-motor connections to survive, and replaces the action-image by pure optical and sound images, opsigns and sonsigns. In Ozu, there is no universal line which connects moments of decision, and links the dead to the living, as in Mizoguchi; nor is there any breathing space or encompasser to contain a profound question, as in Kurosawa. Ozu's spaces are raised to the state of any-space-whatevers, whether by disconnection, or vacuity (here again Ozu may be considered one of the first inventors). The false continuity of gaze, of direction and even of the position of objects are constant and systematic. One case of camera movement gives a good example of disconnection: in Early Summer, the heroine goes forward on tiptoe to surprise someone in a restaurant, the camera drawing back in order to keep her in the centre of the frame; then the camera goes forward to a corridor, but this corridor is no longer in the restaurant, it is in the house of the heroine who has already returned home. As for the empty spaces, without characters or movement, they are interiors emptied of their occupants, deserted exteriors or landscapes in nature. In Ozu they take on an autonomy which they do not immediately possess even in neo-realism, which accords them an apparent value which is relative (in relation to a story), or consequential (once the action is done with). They reach the absolute, as instances of pure contemplation, and immediately bring about the identity of the mental and the physical, the real and the imaginary, the subject and the object, the world and the I. They correspond in part to what Schrader calls 'cases of statis', Noel burch 'pillow shots', Richie 'still lifes'. ....
A still life cannot be confused with a landscape. An empty spaces owes its importance above all to the absence of a possible content, whilst the still life is defined by the presence and composition of objects which are wrapped up in themselves or become their own container: as in the long shot of the vase almost at the end of Late Spring. .... for instance in Ozu, the marvellous composition with the bottle and the lighthouse, at the beginning of A Story of Floating Weeds. The distinction is none the less that of the empty and the full, which brings into play all the nuances or relations in Chinese and Japanese thought, as two aspects of contemplation. If empty spaces, interiors and exteriors, constitute purely optical (and sound) situations, still lifes are the reverse, the correlate." Excerpted from pages 13-17, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, by Gilles Deleuze

Justifying the frame

Asia's participation during the Second World War is marked by incredible loss, politically, socially and culturally speaking. However, we often fail to understand, as Richard Bach said, that "what the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly." The rapid westernization of the region, which the Great Chinese Wall couldn't counterpoint this time, provoked deep local reactions that are still proving to be fruitful. The West's damnation of dictatorship regimes and society's mistrust towards communism are leading China and its neighbours in an alternative direction of achieving progress and prosperity. And in such a period of crisis, Eastern culture returns to its rich roots to seek self-respect and a base for further development. In her book "South-Eastern Asia. Traditions and Contemporaneity" Hristina Mircheva talks about "the Asian way of thinking" of progress and prosperity:

A catalyst of these bold thoughts is the Asian way of thinking about the responsibility of every person, about the requirement of relying on your own strength, to serve the nation without expecting a reward, to believe in the rebirth of the Asian origin, to devote one's strength to this revival.

And this strong notion expresses itself in Asia's age-old nationalism, its realising the difference of European societies, its "self-dependence and independence."

This process of returning to the roots can clearly be seen in Eastern Asia's contemporary cinema. However, present cinema - looking into itself through contemplation - is an inheritor of another XXth century cinema, that of Yasujiro Ozu.

Since the similarities between Ozu's films and today's "contemplative cinema" have already been spotted, let me explore and try to justify my way of understanding Ozu's slowness, preliminary stating that this retardation today has evolved on a much larger scale.

Ozu's post-war contemplative style can be seen forming in his earlier custom-focused films, such as the later-remade 1934 A Story of Floating Weeds. Although here the purpose of the camera is to turn the viewer into a kind of stalker (a decision implied in Bruno Dumont's Flandres in a more distant and coldly transitioned way), certain moments hint towards observing, namely those post-action, empty-framed, after-the-content-curve seconds, which Girish spoke of, during which the viewer is left with a bare shot, deprived of human presence, confusedly wondering what to make of the inanimate setting.

During the 12th and 13th century Japan discovered and perfected a kind of garden that surrounded tea-spaces and comforted towards contemplation, self-observation and meditation. These gardens, constructed similarly to Buddhist monastries, were entered through a path which lead, along a corridor, to the small tea-room at the far end. While entering, visitors had to bend their head (due to the low door), which expressed their respect. The path to the room was considered a road of thinking. It seems to me that those after-the-content-curve moments in Ozu's film are, in fact, such little paths, though, in reverse orther. If a person has to purify and think before the tea ceremony, here one needs the event of the shot in order to comprehend it. The director occasionally provides such meditation paths, which are an actionless continuation of the action.

Another point, which applies to all of Ozu's films, is the low camera angle at the height of a sitting man. This is a position close to the one of a meditating Buddha - isolated from the world and devoted to self-observation, but also of a kneeing man, expressing admiration. Thus, the viewer is placed in a position which intuitively provokes contemplation as well as unprejudiced appreciation.

One thing that especially puzzled me was the recurrence of still, inanimate pots-full shots. The same is present in Eric Khoo's 2005 Be With Me, although there the dramaturgian validity is due to a different cause, possibly the suggestion of deafness, stillness, muteness. Then, a Japanese garden style gave me an answer. "Shinden" or "rock arden", or "zen garden" is an artistic composition of a number of rocks. It plays with the conceptions of beauty and the way we experience the three dimensions. Ozu's household compositions very much resemble their zen-ness and minimalism in searching a simplicity of forms and organising space.

During the Tang dynasty (and later the Song dynasty, 10-13 c.) between 7-10 century, the Chinese landscape painting was developed and mastered as well as transfered in Japan and South Korea. It carried the idea of nature being a vastness of space which the human eye can embrace in only one look. Thus was initiated a tradition of interpreting Chinese landscapes (mountains and rivers, mainly) into wide or long silk canvases of succeeding plans. When a mountain chain had to be drawn, the artist unfolded the silk roll horisontally; while when the landscape consisted of high sharp peaks, he unfolded it vertically in order to spread the image into a number of plans one on top of the other. The same technique was later adopted by Japanese masters and can be detected in Ozu's organisation of the frame.

The last shot, on the other hand, forwards to Angelopoulos's The Weeping Meadow.

The sky had to compulsory be present in the painting.

Three times can Ozu's camera be seen moving and it is done linearly. Every time it tries to envelop a large group of people/objects. Two of these three times it spreads aside an audience - too big to detailedly be grasped as a whole. The last time it slides along a sequence of organised pots - gradually separating groups of structured "zen compositions."

I perceive this directorial decision as a reference to the imposibility of encompassing the immensity of the landscape painting. It was drawn in such detail and accuracy of the lines that one had to got close in order to appreciate them. Thus, however, one couldn't see the whole, but could only read it - image by image. I believe Ozu applied this technique in order to create a similar effect: add an emphasis on the beauty of the single detail and how it flows rhythmically into the whole entity.

Old Joy

As the blog-a-thon draws to an end, I've read and enjoyed much but contributed little. This isn't a contribution in the form of discussion as much as a review I did of a film on the list, namely Old Joy, which I posted on my Melbourne Film Blog at the start of the month after seeing it at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).

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Photo: Will Oldham and Daniel London, Old Joy

This is a low budget independent film directed and co-written by Kelly Reichardt that recently had four screenings at ACMI. Maybe it’s the seasonal vacuum of quality cinema one expects this time of year, or the film has some reputation preceding it, or the fact that I saw it at its final ACMI screening on Sunday – I was surprised at the huge turnout. ACMI’s smaller cinema 1 was packed to capacity.

Old Joy is a quietly accomplished film. Poetic and observational, aspects of it remind me of different films. The observational aspect reminds me of Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, particularly the capturing of seemingly meaningless passing details. The poetic nature and cryptic relationship dynamics reminded me of the quietly confident nature of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Iklimer (Climates, 2006), my favourite film at last year’s MIFF.

Like Climates, the film is a nuanced reflection on a disintegrating relationship. The premise is simple: two thirty-something friends from college, Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham), meet up after a long break for a weekend camping trip to a secluded spot in the mountains.

There is tension between the characters, and the film observes this without giving clarification for the causes or any resolution. Mark seeks permission to go camping from his expectant partner Tanya (Tanya Smith) who appears not overly happy at the idea.

Mark’s character seems quietly introspective (he’s meditating in the garden when Kurt’s call is made) and doesn’t talk a lot. When Kurt first suggests they take Mark’s aging Volvo station wagon rather than Kurt’s beaten up old truck, there is a hint of someone who is a hanger-on, an idea supported by Kurt borrowing ten dollars from Mark.

For Mark, the outing seems to represent an escape from domestic life while for Kurt it’s another adventure. While neither appears to have progressed materially in life (nor particularly inclined to), Mark has concerns about family, home and security while Kurt seems to have changed little since college days. Close friends at college, they have drifted apart and Kurt is keen to bridge the divide that time and circumstances have created.

In the absence of dialogue, we get a sense of what goes on in Mark’s head by the radio program he is listening to in the car as it travels out of the city. This is a very clever device that adds a subtle and interesting layer to the film. Discussion of the war in Iraq and other social issues are heard on a talkback station. Simultaneously, there are interesting shots of passing urban, urban fringe, industrial and then rural landscapes as the duo gradually progress on their journey. The scenery is nicely photographed avoiding the cliché of being postcard beautiful (which would have been an easy trap to fall into with the natural splendour of the Oregon mountain ranges).

Some may find this boring; I found it fascinating as it captures the quiet minutiae of life that are usually overlooked in mainstream films attempting to overwhelm the senses. It’s consistent with my belief that everyone’s life is worthy of a story and reminds me of Matt Riviera’s 10 Thoughts on Watching and Appreciating Film. Point three: If a film is slow get into the Zone. For me, I didn’t need to get into the Zone; I was right in there with it and enjoying the ride.

The meandering music of Yo La Tengo (who also contributed to the vastly different Shortbus) really added a nice ambience to the road journey. The dialogue, mostly by Kurt was also interestingly idiosyncratic but believable – including egocentric ideas about the basis of the universe. My interpretation of the dialogue was that Kurt was trying to appeal to the intellectualism shared during their college days and hadn’t really moved on in life as Mark had with his ‘real-life’ concerns. Kurt notes an uncomfortable gulf between them.

The title derives from a dream Kurt has in which a woman tells him that “sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy”. Sorrow is the subtle theme of the film. By the director’s minimalist approach, we are left to trust our own instincts as to what has happened in the past (in terms of friendship), what has been lost and what may become of the protagonists.

I found the destination of the men, Bagby Hot Springs, quite uplifting. It reminded me of drives I had taken to places like Sherbrooke Forest in the Dandenong Ranges outside of Melbourne or, more recently, to Stephensons Falls in the Otway Ranges. The latter location has special nostalgic significance on a personal level as it was at this place that the recent photos of my late son Abhi were taken, as posted with my review of Volver.

Of some interest is that the film was co-produced by Todd Haynes, director of significant films like Safe and Far From Heaven.

If your idea of a night out is a visit to the local cinemaplex, forget Old Joy. If you happen to get the opportunity to see it, don’t expect a masterpiece or anything profound. In its own quiet melancholy way and oozing with authenticity, it is a beautifully poetic rumination on human relationships that ends as subtly and ambiguously as it starts. It leaves a quiet resonance in the mind as one leaves the cinema or even now as I recall it. I hope it comes out on DVD as I’d like to buy it.

Official site / IMDB

Dir, Ed: Kelly Reichardt Rating: Unclassified Duration: 76 min Genre: drama Language: English Country: USA Release: 4/1/07 – 7/1/07, ACMI Scr: Jonathan Raymond, Kelly Reichardt Prod: Joshua Blum, Todd Haynes, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, Neil Kopp, Mike S. Ryan, Anish Savjani, Rajen Savjani Sound Des: Eric Offen Phot: Peter Sillen Prod Des: Morgan Currie Mus: Yo La Tengo Cast: Daniel London, Will Oldham, Tanya Smith