Demolition

One of the first works from Harvard’s acclaimed Sensory Ethnography Lab was this riveting study of the never-ending cycle of construction and destruction in booming modern China, in this case the western city of Chengdu. On a massive construction site, laborers in shirtsleeves smoke, joke, and slave away, dwarfed by the machinery and landscapes that surround them. As time goes on, they also begin to notice the camera that’s filming them, and “that man from Harvard” who is always there. A document on labor, modernity, and cinema, Demolition offers a primer on both China and the documentary form.