People’s Park

An action shot of some activity taking place with two people facing each other, one leaning far back, in front of an audience of adults and children outdoors.

Libbie D. Cohn and JP Sniadecki | U.S., China
78 min film on a loop

The Margaret Mead Film Festival invites you to spend a whole afternoon in the park… without leaving the Museum. People’s Park, a single 78-minute shot, takes observational documentary to glorious extremes with an uninterrupted journey into an urban park in Chengdu, China. Couples waltz, sycamores drift in the wind, and a hypnotic rhythm is forged from the park’s ambient soundscape paired with glimpses of public leisure in Chinese culture. The film will be shown on a loop as an installation, so visitors can drift in and out of the room or become virtual flâuneurs, immersing themselves in the scenes for hours to experience what one critic called “a pure kind of cinema magic…[that] makes it more real than real.”