"A Disappearance Foretold"

UCLA Film & Television Archive, REDCAT, Los Angeles Filmforum, Echo Park Film Center, Pomona College Museum of Art and Museum of the Moving Image (NY) present “Between Disorder and Unexpected Pleasures: Tales from the New Chinese Cinema.” 
“A Disappearance Foretold (Qianmen qian)” 
(2008)
Directed by Olivier Meys and Zhang Yaxuan

In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing became an epicenter of the mass destruction and forced relocation of working-class dwellings that have swept urban China in recent years. Many ancient neighborhoods of the capital city were destroyed and “renovated.” Belgian documentarist Olivier Meys and Chinese producer/critic Zhang Yaxuan teamed with a group of independent filmmakers to follow the transformation of Qianmen, a 600-year-old neighborhood just south of Tiananmen Square, into a field of rubble. The film portrays the dramatic fight between the real estate developers and the 80,000 inhabitants of Qianmen — from couples leaving their family house in tears and disenfranchised demolition workers to spirited grannies defiantly resisting eviction.

Producer: Karim Cham. 
Screenwriter: Olivier Meys, Zhang Yaxuan. 
Cinematographer: Yang Jin, Tan Tan, Zhang Yaxuan. 
Presented in Putonghua and English dialogue. DigiBeta, Color, 86 min.