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Symphony of the Heaven City

director: Lordan Zafranović

original title: Simfonija nebeskog grada

country: Serbia, Montenegro

year: 2003

running time: 57 min.

synopsis

A story of contrasts between past and present, life and death, in Shanghai, the biggest city of the People’s Republic of China. The film depicts national commemorations as a way of sanitizing and forgetting the past, the importance of spectacle in the creation of a national consciousness. In criticizing histories and wars built on nationalism and in depicting the growth of capitalism, the symbolic fireworks ironically celebrate the present as a memory of the Second World War, introducing an avant-garde way of experimental historical documentation.

Detail:
The only human sound is a baby's cry, a Weltschmerz, in the ruins of the old Shanghai South Railway Station on “Bloody Sunday” after the Japanese bombing in August 1937.

more about film

director:	Lordan Zafranović
producer:	Aleksandar Janković, Gavrilo Azinović, Svetlana Bandić
photography:	Vojislav Popović
editing:	Petar Jakonić
music:	Milena Slepcević
sound:	Velibor Hajduković, Nebojsa Zorić

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