Zhenchen Liu (CN/FR)
Shanghai Shanghai
11:37 | 2006

1976: year of the death of Mao Tse Tung and his main minister, Zhu Enlai. It was the end of the Cultural Revolution in China. I was born that year in Shanghai, in a family that was completely destroyed by the Revolution. As for myself, I did not experience that insane revolution, but a different one...

The eighties : The opening up of China has brought about enormous changes after years of isolation, changes which the city of Shanghai represents best.

This ‘window of 21rst Century China’s openness’ seems to have taken its slogan “higher, faster, further” to the point of dizziness. A one hundred fl oor, 492 meter tall concrete and glass rocket is soon to become the highest building in the world. It will house the Shanghai World Financial Center.

I have been living in Europe for fi ve years now, but each year when I go back to Shanghai I cannot recognize it. It does not seem to want to have a history, all I see is a feverish rush towards modernity...

I have seen Shanghai change, and Shanghai changes still more... This city is producing a culture of speed, cost-effectiveness, technology, instantaneity, fragmentation, competition, ephemerality...

This film presents two Shanghais : Shanghai as it is conceived, thought out, imagined in models and virtual rendering videos and Shanghai as it is experienced by the people who actually live in it.

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