Villages Amidst the City (Part1)

http://www.sellegr.com
This movie was created in Fall 2005 to explore and elucidate the relationships and spatial characteristics of urban villages in Shenzhen China. The movie is divided into two acts: the city and the villages. The city part opens the movie and is used to reveal the modern and hectic nature of new Chinese cities, creating contrasts and setting up comparisons between the city and the villages. The village part is subdivided into five sections: background information, street, alley, interior, and rooftop. The background information provides geographic and demographic information, while the latter four sections represent the four main spaces of the urban villages. The movie examines in detail the spaces, the activities, and the people living in the villages. A unique world is revealed, containing a dense and poor population, rampant prostitution and gambling, illeigal arcades, hip barbershops, outdoor billiards, chaotic restaurants, claustrophobic alleys, communal bedrooms, and peaceful rooftops. Guangsheng Zeng and myself were responsible for the concept, cinematography, and editing of the movie. Ling Li assisted with the editing. This movie was created by us for Urbanus: Architecture and Design. It was featured at the 2005 Sao Paolo Biennale and the 2005 Shenzhen Architecture Biennale as a part of larger Urbanus exhibits focused on urban villages. Due to YouTube size constraints the movie has been split into two parts here. Part 1 contains the city, village background, and village street sections. Part 2 contains the village alley, village interior, and village rooftop sections.
-Richie Gelles ©2005

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• 深圳
• 中国
• 城中村
• shenzhen
• China
• urban
• villages
• gambling
• sellegr
• richie
• gelles