無用 Inutil
Went to watch "useless" by Jia Zhangke last nite. He had come along (so does his usual lead actress, Zhao Tao, whom is the producer of this doco). There are also 2 film critics/ppl from bejiing and taipei to do a informal interview/Q&A with Jia Zhangke. I kept seeing Jia since I returned from UK. It was the same time last year that I saw film after "still life". Still one of the best films I saw last year.
The doco is about a fashion designer in china, who try to promote her own label, called "Useless" or "Inutil". But the film goes much more than that, as the designer and director try to explore how to (through fashion) retain memories and human touches/relationship (because nowadays all the clothes that we bought are made by factories, which bear no direct r/ship between the person making the clothes and the person who wears it). It then goes beyond just the fashion designer but to remote area of Feng Yeung to interview some coal mine worker as well as tailor working there. I felt that he doesn't really too conscious about what he is making, almost just left the characters/ppl he met leads the way. It was a small project for him but that's exactly why it gives such a comfy feeling through out the film.
The doco is about a fashion designer in china, who try to promote her own label, called "Useless" or "Inutil". But the film goes much more than that, as the designer and director try to explore how to (through fashion) retain memories and human touches/relationship (because nowadays all the clothes that we bought are made by factories, which bear no direct r/ship between the person making the clothes and the person who wears it). It then goes beyond just the fashion designer but to remote area of Feng Yeung to interview some coal mine worker as well as tailor working there. I felt that he doesn't really too conscious about what he is making, almost just left the characters/ppl he met leads the way. It was a small project for him but that's exactly why it gives such a comfy feeling through out the film.
可能這不是一套劇情片,反而我覺得導演拍得很自由,有很多部份甚至有點神來之筆的感覺. 就像放了Beyond的"情人"來做了一個背景音樂, 非常貼!後來才知道這首歌只是一首他很喜歡的歌而已.
Also during the Q&A session, there was one audience asking about how "fake" or "sarcastic" the film portraits the way the fashion designer tries to input "memories" into her clothing (as she literally buried the clothes into the ground in order to them gain "history/memory") vs, say, those clothes that wore by the coal miners everyday. I actually had the same question to myself while watching the film, although not as obvious as this particular audience pointed out.
Memories/attachment to a object seems to be the subject of this film, rather than fashion/clothing itself. How we gain those memories and how to retain them, is I think, a very personal matter. Nonetheless, in a constant changing world like today, there is no doubt no matter how we do it, it would be more difficult than ever to do it through an object, because nothing ever last.
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