Present.Perfect. preceded by Being Human
Director: Shengze Zhu, Christopher Kulendran Thomas
2019 / 134min / DCP
Zhu winnowed down some 800 hours of live-streaming footage for her third feature, winner of the prestigious Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, a kaleidoscopic view of self-documenting streamers in the People’s Republic of China—among them factory workers, street artists, and one severe burn victim—and the vast, unseen virtual audiences for whom they perform their lives for payment in attention and, occasionally, cash. Avoiding both techno-utopian boosterism and Luddite pessimism, Zhu’s found-footage symphony explores the complexities and contradictions of China’s short-lived streaming boom, already curtailed by government surveillance by the time of its completion.
A clip from Being Human (Christopher Kulendran Thomas, 2019, 10 mins)
Present.Perfect. (Shengze Zhu, 2019, 124 mins)
Introduction by artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas on Saturday, April 25th
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