[Video Essay] Disappearing City

video: https://youtu.be/Uo916_1_xh0

Disappearing City — Balcony

Directed by: Hua Mingyang 3035830612

From the window of my room on the thirtieth floor, as far as the eye can see are low, old houses, densely packed as if mosaic with each other. The dense roof of the building turns into small squares, blocking the view from the outside. As a very inclusive city, Guangzhou accommodates a mobile population of over nine million people. The urban village is like a sponge that can gulp the mobile population, providing cheap housing for a mobile population of nearly five million. Since 2020, dense buildings and inadequate sanitation in urban villages have led to many outbreaks, which has accelerated the government’s plan to demolish urban villages. Therefore, I would like to record the disappearing urban villages and the lives of the residents there.

This video includes street scenes of several urban villages. The shooting time has morning, noon, and night to provide a better and more detailed record of the state of the urban village at different times of the day to reflect the life of the residents. In addition, the whole video focuses on the balconies of the urban village residents, which carries a metaphoric representation of the extension of residents’ daily life. The inspiration for the balcony work as a symbol of people’s daily life came from my research. Before the inspiration was formed, I went online to find a lot of vlogs about the balcony and investigate the balconies around me. I found that I could glimpse pieces of other people’s lives through the furnishings and décor of the balcony.

I conducted the research through site visits. When I walked into the existing urban village and looked closely, I saw many traces of the residents’ lives. Some of their balconies were full of clothes; some had a few pots of flowers. In addition, I also searched the internet for interviews and news about the residents of the urban village to better understand their perspectives. At the same time, I also reviewed papers on the history of urban village changes. The repeated mention of demolition and renovation of the urban village became why I chose the disappearing city’s theme.

According to the theme, my video has two parts: one shows migrant workers are striving to make a life in the bustling city, and the other part expresses a sense of confusion about where to go because the demolition of the urban village caused migrant workers are unable to pay for the expensive rents. Although the urban village looks cramped and dilapidated, it is also home to countless migrant workers, providing them with a place to rest in their busy and hard-working lives. To emphasize the atmosphere of the home, I included components such as clothes floating on the balcony, children’s dolls hanging out to dry, and plants kept by the residents on the balcony in the video. Those seemingly dilapidated balconies become a channel to show residents’ lives to the audience through the camera: residents are no longer distant strangers; they are like us, with busy jobs, with their children, trying to live in this city. When shooting these scenes, I always used the technique of close-up to focus on the objects on the balcony to convey the imagery (e.g., Close up of the doll to express the continuity of life). Moreover, I adopted eye-level shots to film the scenes in an urban village, which helps to give the audience a more immersive feeling of the environment.

For the second part, I selected three news broadcasts to add to the video, conveying the current situation of the gradual disappearance of urban villages through superimposed sound and news images. I used acceleration here to create a sense that the demolition of urban villages is common and unchangeable. Afterward, from the photos with “demolition” written on the walls to the videos of the dilapidated buildings and scaffolding, I wanted to convey a sense of decay and desolation to the audience. The narrow balcony where clothes were hung out to dry and planted flowers was covered with dust and mud, and even steel bars were exposed. Compared with the scenes of life in front, the marks of people’s lives in the planned demolition of the urban village were eliminated. And one day, the imprint of the existence of this urban village will disappear and be replaced by more modern high-rise buildings. It’s like the cracks of the city have been filled in, and no one will care much. But what about the people who used to live in it? Where should they go? Are they going to disappear along with the disappeared urban villages?

word count: 766

References

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