One night, two men meet in an abandoned building and share memories of their past lives. They leave the building and roam in the night, wandering through a heavily textured landscape of ruins. They wander back to the abandoned building, only to find it has changed, collapsed, disappeared. With a visual approach that blends fictional and documentary elements, Cong Feng’s Stratum 1: The Visitors is a rumination on ruins and the transformative roles of space and place in contemporary China. This month, UCCA Selects presents Stratum 1: The Visitors, followed by a Q&A session with filmmaker Cong Feng.

The UCCA Selects series showcases the most recent Chinese art films and productions from overseas. This program will feature one fiction film and one documentary film each month. The series is curated by Meng Xie.

Cong Feng (b. 1972) is an independent filmmaker and poet based in Beijing. He is the director of the “Italy of Gansu” trilogy, which includes the films Religion (2006), Doctor Ma's Country Clinic (2008), and The Unfinished History of Life (2010). His most recent work, Stratum 1: The Visitors (2013), won the top prize at the 2013 Beijing Independent Film Festival. His works have appeared at the Berlin International Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and across the independent film festival circuit in China. He is also an editor of the Chinese online magazine Film Auteur, which publishes critical writings by independent filmmakers in China.

Meng Xie (UCCA film curator)