More film festival updates – rather, just the two as I haven't had time to see anything else. Saw Jia Zhangke's Wuyong (Useless). I have the DVD of “Still Life” and then spotted a piece on Ma Ke in a recent issue of Selvedge. A lot of people may end up seeing the film because it seems to have been somewhat well publicized as a Ma Ke film (with a nod to China’s rapid industrialisation). It is not just this but more on that later.
The film has three segments, which segue into each other. The first follows the daily rituals of a factory churning out mass produced clothes, then we go on to Ma Ke’s house/studio which is restful and quiet as also to her appearance at Paris Fashion Week (rather ambiguous section, this). It ends in the director’s home town in Shanxi province. The film is rather weak and lazy in parts – reportedly the director shot 60 hours of footage, so its either fatigue or just an attempt to say as little as possible and let the viewer take home what he/she may that results in a movie where its at times difficult to connect the dots. It doesn’t even seem willfully ambiguous, just somewhat absent-minded in its execution.
Too much has been written about soulless mass produced clothes as well as the slow clothing movement where designers pronounce sagely on the making of things by hand, the environment, the connection between people and the like. I don’t have any quarrel with either even if I am not wholly in agreement. The first section follows textile workers at what appears to be a typical day at work. It’s a mélange of machinery noises, people at repetitive tasks and the things that may punctuate a day like lunch, a visit to the doctor and the like. Unlike in the last section, there is little enquiry into peoples lives in this section apart from an interlude with the doctor (is this a visual pun on industrialisation as malady?).
Then we go on to Ma Ke who appears to be an intense young woman interested in demonstrating that the Chinese are cutting-edge and creative (note that she does appear to be using the factory for her label “Mixmind” since the first section ends with a woman hanging a set of clothes with the Exception de Mixmind label). The house/workshop is organic and beautiful – the wood, the walls, the green outside all act as a exquisite counterpart to the grey industrial landscape of the previous section. Some of what Ma Ke thinks is poetic, some of it comes clothed in the jargon peculiar to the eco fashion industry. The hand made clothes for the Paris show are of course intended as statement (the label Mixmind seems more in the mould of “off the rack” designer clothing), they are voluminous and aged. The Paris section is surreal. There is a backstage interlude with the models, their boredom and bemusement are both captured but eventually they all do a good job of standing still in the clothes. I am not sure if the ambiguity is intended but it is inherent in the spectacle of Ma Ke’s old clothes left to age in the earth, intended to demonstrate both its connection to the earth and to its maker and wearer and the sophisticated bazaar of Fashion Week where this is just one of many shows to amuse viewers.
I can’t see mass produced clothes as fully soulless perhaps because I have a technical background and there is a linear development in textile technology. Certain fabrics, colours and cuts are made possible by new technologies and a wearer must feel as much pleasure as the wearer of handlooms. The connection between the wearer and the maker is often tenuous even when clothes are handmade, in India 20 years back, the weaver/seller would visit your house and I am not sure that knowing how it was made imbued the transaction with something more spiritual, so to speak. The pleasure of clothes after all lies in newness, the feel, the colours, the texture and above all the intoxicating vision of one’s self kitted out in it.
The third section, however, in my opinion made the film almost brilliant (had Jia spent some time on giving all three sections and the film more depth and clarity). Ma Ke visits Fenyang in Shaanxi (in a 4WD no less, which sweeps past a yokel whose progress we then follow) and we are casually plunged into its life. The effect of industrialisation, the abandonment of old professions and the uncertainty of social change are all implicit in this segment. In the mine scenes, as well as in those of miners lounging above ground, you can see the literal clothes of the earth as opposed to Ma Ke’s statement aged clothes. The small time tailor who has pragmatically abandoned the profession for mining in light of the new factories and those who get by mending and doing odd jobs are both present and Jia seems to make an emotional investment in these scenes. Both the factories and Ma Ke represent the new China. Shanxi is the new China too – especially the literal black scars on its green landscape - but its also a China that is disappearing. The film ends on this in-between state of things – the hole-in-the wall tailor uncertain if he can retain his present premises and the reality that he may well have to look for a different place to make place for the new.
Interview with the director here.
Even if not fully clear in the film, the director's sympathy seems to lie with Ma Ke. Review of film here.
A perceptive review here.
The film has three segments, which segue into each other. The first follows the daily rituals of a factory churning out mass produced clothes, then we go on to Ma Ke’s house/studio which is restful and quiet as also to her appearance at Paris Fashion Week (rather ambiguous section, this). It ends in the director’s home town in Shanxi province. The film is rather weak and lazy in parts – reportedly the director shot 60 hours of footage, so its either fatigue or just an attempt to say as little as possible and let the viewer take home what he/she may that results in a movie where its at times difficult to connect the dots. It doesn’t even seem willfully ambiguous, just somewhat absent-minded in its execution.
Too much has been written about soulless mass produced clothes as well as the slow clothing movement where designers pronounce sagely on the making of things by hand, the environment, the connection between people and the like. I don’t have any quarrel with either even if I am not wholly in agreement. The first section follows textile workers at what appears to be a typical day at work. It’s a mélange of machinery noises, people at repetitive tasks and the things that may punctuate a day like lunch, a visit to the doctor and the like. Unlike in the last section, there is little enquiry into peoples lives in this section apart from an interlude with the doctor (is this a visual pun on industrialisation as malady?).
Then we go on to Ma Ke who appears to be an intense young woman interested in demonstrating that the Chinese are cutting-edge and creative (note that she does appear to be using the factory for her label “Mixmind” since the first section ends with a woman hanging a set of clothes with the Exception de Mixmind label). The house/workshop is organic and beautiful – the wood, the walls, the green outside all act as a exquisite counterpart to the grey industrial landscape of the previous section. Some of what Ma Ke thinks is poetic, some of it comes clothed in the jargon peculiar to the eco fashion industry. The hand made clothes for the Paris show are of course intended as statement (the label Mixmind seems more in the mould of “off the rack” designer clothing), they are voluminous and aged. The Paris section is surreal. There is a backstage interlude with the models, their boredom and bemusement are both captured but eventually they all do a good job of standing still in the clothes. I am not sure if the ambiguity is intended but it is inherent in the spectacle of Ma Ke’s old clothes left to age in the earth, intended to demonstrate both its connection to the earth and to its maker and wearer and the sophisticated bazaar of Fashion Week where this is just one of many shows to amuse viewers.
I can’t see mass produced clothes as fully soulless perhaps because I have a technical background and there is a linear development in textile technology. Certain fabrics, colours and cuts are made possible by new technologies and a wearer must feel as much pleasure as the wearer of handlooms. The connection between the wearer and the maker is often tenuous even when clothes are handmade, in India 20 years back, the weaver/seller would visit your house and I am not sure that knowing how it was made imbued the transaction with something more spiritual, so to speak. The pleasure of clothes after all lies in newness, the feel, the colours, the texture and above all the intoxicating vision of one’s self kitted out in it.
The third section, however, in my opinion made the film almost brilliant (had Jia spent some time on giving all three sections and the film more depth and clarity). Ma Ke visits Fenyang in Shaanxi (in a 4WD no less, which sweeps past a yokel whose progress we then follow) and we are casually plunged into its life. The effect of industrialisation, the abandonment of old professions and the uncertainty of social change are all implicit in this segment. In the mine scenes, as well as in those of miners lounging above ground, you can see the literal clothes of the earth as opposed to Ma Ke’s statement aged clothes. The small time tailor who has pragmatically abandoned the profession for mining in light of the new factories and those who get by mending and doing odd jobs are both present and Jia seems to make an emotional investment in these scenes. Both the factories and Ma Ke represent the new China. Shanxi is the new China too – especially the literal black scars on its green landscape - but its also a China that is disappearing. The film ends on this in-between state of things – the hole-in-the wall tailor uncertain if he can retain his present premises and the reality that he may well have to look for a different place to make place for the new.
Interview with the director here.
Even if not fully clear in the film, the director's sympathy seems to lie with Ma Ke. Review of film here.
A perceptive review here.
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