Portland Documentary & eXperimental Film Festival

Jerusalem, summer 2007.
“There were other places where the lord fell, and others where he rested; but one of the most curious landmarks of ancient history we found, on this morning walk through the crooked lanes toward Calvary, was a certain stone built into a house – a stone that was so seemed and scarred that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human face. The projections that answered for cheeks were worn smooth by the passionate kisses of generations of pilgrims from distant lands. We asked ‘Why?’ The guide said that it was because this was one of “the very stones of Jerusalem” that Christ mentioned when he reproved for permitting the people to cry “Hosannah!” when he made his memorable entry into the city upon an ass. One of the pilgrims said, “But there is not evidence that the stones did cry out – Christ said that if the people stopped from shouting Hosannah, the very stones would do it.” The guide was perfectly serene. He said calmly, “This is one of the stones that would have cried out.” - from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

From the Maroon village of Malobi in Suriname, South America, this single-take film offers a strikingly contemporary take on a Jean Rouch classic. Its Halloween at the Equator, Lighting Bolt for the jungle set.

Today! is a sun-lighted, purposefully unfinished motion picture starring one of the filmmakers as one of the filmmakers. Though contents may have settled during shipping and handling, some highlights from today’s excerpted episodes of Today! may include cameo appearances by the United States Postal Service, quality time in Bangalore with a toilet paper voodoo doll, and a recurring pre-occupation with a useful but problematically self-aggrandizing shopping bag.

The South China Mall outside of Guangzhou in southern China is the world’s largest shopping mall. Built in 2005, the South China Mall is more than twice the size of the previous record holder, the Mall of America in Minnesota. Designed as a celebration of middle class consumption and Vegas-like spectacle, the Mall is often evoked as a symbol of China’s emergence as an economic superpower and its eclipsing of the United States. The reality on the ground however is much more complex. Four years after it opened, the South China Mall sits almost entirely empty. In the current economic climate, perhaps more than anything else the Mall can be seen as a metaphor for the future of global capitalism.

The Songhau River runs through Harbin, the capital of China’s Heilongjiang province, and serves as the city’s main water source. At all hours of the day, people flock to the crowded urban space where Harbin meets the river. By attending to the everyday activities of leisure and labor unfolding along the banks and promenade, Songhua depicts the intimate and complex relationship between Harbin city residents and their “mother river.”