This rather experimental and abstract short takes place two hundred kilometers from Beijing, in a stone quarry where men live amidst rocks, as they try to shape boulders into art.
All Movements Should Kill the Wind is screening at Vienna Shorts
The short comprises of a series of interconnecting sequences, which start with extreme zoom-ins, which result in images that occasionally remind of extreme weather phenomena, before the camera takes several steps back to reveal the actual point of focus. Rocks, machines that sculpt the rock and men who work on the rock are presented, with one in particular taking the majority of the short's duration, as we watch him from behind walking and then working, always filled with dust head to feet. The focus then switches to the whole of the quarry, where other men also work on the rocks, while dust seems to cover everything. Some wear masks, others simply do not care, in a setting that looks too much like a dystopia.
A bit later, the focus switches to the statues these workers make, and particularly on their hands, which include ones of Mao, the Madonna, and ancient Roman/Greek, in a comment that seems to state that art actually knows no religion, ethnicity or time frames.
The film ends with a view of the wider area, where the close by sea and rocks that are scattered around on the brinks of a forest present another kind of dystopia.
Wang Yuhan directs a film that lingers between the experimental short and the installation. Despite his unconventional approach, though, his comments are quite eloquent. The way man shapes his environment, the excruciating circumstances of working in a quarry and the concept of art are all here, and actually carry the short for the whole of its 12 minutes.
The “trick” with the extreme zoom and the gradual reveal of what is actually in front of the camera also works quite well, with Wang Yuyan showing he knows his way around a handheld camera. The noise that fills the quarry and a large part of the short is annoying, but again stresses the aforementioned comment about working in a quarry.
“All Movements Should Kill the Wind” is a very difficult short to critique upon, but there is obviously artistry and power in the images present, and a kind of permeating sadness that deems the film quite evocative.
