People’s Park

A mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind window into modern China, PEOPLE’S PARK is an exhilarating single shot documentary that immerses viewers in an unbroken journey through a famous urban park in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. PEOPLE’S PARK was produced at Harvard’s groundbreaking Sensory Ethnography Lab, which has been responsible for some of the most critically-acclaimed, envelope-pushing documentaries of recent years (including SWEETGRASS, LEVIATHAN, and the upcoming MANAKAMANA.) The film explores the dozens of moods, rhythms, and pockets of performance coexisting in tight proximity within the park’s prismatic social space, capturing waltzing couples, mighty sycamores, karaoke singers, and buzzing cicadas. A sensory meditation on cinematic time and space, PEOPLE’S PARK offers a fresh gaze at public interaction, leisure and self-expression in today’s China.