Director
Shu Haolun
Genres
Documentary
Country
China
Language
Mandarin with English subtitles
Release Date
2006
⏲️ 70min

An Ode to Vanishing Worlds. 

Our Take

Shu Haolun‘s first person documentary film is a heartfelt and relatable account on the loss of places we call home. The film reverberates with nostalgia, as the director explores the rich culture and history of his Shanghai neighbourhood upon its impending destruction. It is a remenisnce of the home that gave sense to his own identity, but, which is now an imagined past. Shu’s reflective voice-over expresses a strong social responsibility and condemns ‘the pervasive worship of modernization’.

NOSTALGIA is an ambitious cinematic essay that combines voice-over, interviews and re-enactments into a rich reflection of a city’s past and present. In paying tribute to cultural traditions before they fade into history, Shu’s work evokes a deeply moving feeling of nostalgia, “one that has universal appeal… grounded in humanist principles” (Thomas Podvin, That’s Shanghai). NOSTALGIA connects one man’s deeply intimate reflections with global societal issues.

Dazhongli is one of Shanghai’s oldest areas. Shu Haolun’s family has lived there for three generations, enjoying a close-knit, communal way of life. Walking around the narrow alleyways and courtyards of his old neighbourhood, Shu depicts with fondness the memories of his childhood, good and bad. Imposing, carved-stone pillars and arches frame the tall, wood doorways of a gray, three-story building. Eight families lived in his house; six people and a cat lived in his family’s one room. Here is the room where grandma and her neighbours played a seemingly endless game of mahjong. Some neighbours are seen exchanging greetings and chatting while they wash clothes in concrete basins in the alleyway. Soon, the people, and the echo of their gossip in the walls will be gone. Dazhongli and its surrounding neighbourhoods are being demolished to make way for gleaming skyscrapers, towering apartment complexes and luxury shopping centres. “We talk about having 5,000 years of Chinese history, but wherever you go, you see demolition.” Shu says. “There are construction sites everywhere… It’s not just that we’ve lost our houses. We no longer feel that home exists.” The present is mixed with the voice-over, with the images and the recollections from the past. The plays like a microhistory sharing a wealth of memories; but, Shu Haolun uses his camera to stand witness for the present. This captures the details of the everyday – also a transient becoming that unfolds on screen – as, Dazhongli and its close-knit, communal way of life are already in the past,  wiped out by the giant bulldozers.

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