Manufactured Landscapes

   The whole film is about rethinking the relationship between humans and nature after the industrial revolution, more precisely, is the era around the 1990s. I think the narrative style is very interesting. There are three storylines. The first is the background information or little stories behind each photograph. The second is the photographer giving a speech and the third one is the exhibition of these photos. The very beginning part mainly focuses on the broad picture of the factory. You can see in the factory with around 5 thousand workers, there is only the sound of machines and you can barely hear workers communicate with each other. And this makes feel this place more like a military base rather than a factory. Then, the director spends some time explaining what he wants to exhibit in this movie and gives a photo showing the condition when one day’s work is done. So far, more attention is paid to the overall situation of the factory.  After that, he focuses lots on the detailed events and individuals. Here, he uses not only photography but also other approaches like the interview, filming. The narrative style mainly involves the storytelling part and the photo exhibiting time. The background music is well-edited and gives you a sense of feeling that what we are discussing in the movie is a very serious topic. I think the most outstanding part is that all the videos he recorded are actually against what we saw on the TV, which is published by the government. And in the narrative part, he barely involves any political position. This provides viewers with space to reflect on themselves. With time moving on, he introduces more topics to us, including e-waste, shipbuilding, recycling oil tanks, the Three Gorges Dam and the development in Shanghai. Most of them have consisted of two narrative styles mentioned above.

Johnny