Stratum 2: The Asthenosphere
Cong Feng
Release year: 2021
Run time: 264 mins
Film type: Documentary
Synopsis
This is a film about both spectacle and space, about how spectacle has caused the mutation of the (physical and phycological) space in which we reside. This film is determined to be the “film on space” of our times, an epic theatre, the general observation of the geological structure of this time. I therefore invent or re-invent some terms for my purpose: archae(now)logy; ruinology; space bankruptcy; theatre of life—theatre of cruelty—theatre of spectacle; the body-film; the New Berlin Wall-Iron Curtain; and “refugees without camps”, “the plants”, “the ghosts,” the asthenosphere, dark energy… I have stolen a great amount of found footage/ready material or from already-existing films. This “stealing” is exactly how to get connected with history and the history of film, to construct an “echo film”.
Director biography
Poet and filmmaker Cong Feng was born in Chengde in 1972. He has previously worked at the National Satellite Meteorology Centre of China and as cultural editor for The International Herald Leader. He has also published two volumes of poetry and taught English to secondary school students. Since 2008, four of his documentaries have screened at the Beijing Independent Film Festival, including the film shot at the school where he taught, The Unfinished History of Life (2010).