Afterimage: J.P. Sniadecki

Demolition

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Past Films

Demolition
J.P. Sniadecki
2008
Tuesday, April 21 7:00 PM
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.
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Foreign Parts
J.P. Sniadecki, Véréna Paravel
U.S., 2010
Wednesday, April 22 7:30 PM
This anthropological, poetic documentary takes a local interest in the industrial Willets Point neighborhood in Queens, New York, where cars are scrapped, salvaged, and repaired. An investigation into urban renewal’s effects on pluralism and the city’s working class.

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Afterimage: J.P. Sniadecki

Filmmakers & Critics in Conversation

“As filmmakers, we strive to listen closely to the world, relinquish our own predetermined goals, and move beyond conventional framings in order to look more deeply at the present moment,” the filmmaker and anthropologist J. P. Sniadecki once wrote. A collaborator in Harvard’s famed Sensory Ethnography Lab, the “studio” behind such groundbreaking works as Sweetgrass and Leviathan, Sniadecki first came to prominence with his documentary Demolition, which followed life on a construction site in Chengdu, China. His feature Foreign Parts (2010, codirected with Véréna Paravel) solidified his standing as one of the US’s foremost “new ethnographic” filmmakers, artists who looked towards cinema as a way, he says, “to allow viewers to have their own sense of the fabric of a place, and to gain experiential knowledge of life there.” His acclaimed new documentary, The Iron Ministry, will screen at...

An exciting voice in documentary film, Sniadecki also teaches at Cornell University and curates independent cinema from China for his series Emergent Visions. We are proud to have him as our guest for our Afterimage series, in conversation with local critic Max Goldberg. Goldberg works as an archivist and writes on cinema for publications including Cinema Scope, The Brooklyn Rail, Keyframe, and, until its recent demise, the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

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J. P. Sniadecki’s visit is presented as part of Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation, made possible by generous funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association®.