Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

What will Beijing’s new districts, built at a dizzying speed, look like in a few years? The question arises right from the beginning when the camera pans over the run-down section of a northern Chinese city. Some of the buildings are missing windows, the façades are crumbling, and in the middle of a multi-storey building a hole gapes like an open wound. The bricks were knocked out and used for other purposes. In the district that gives the film its title, everything that isn’t nailed down gets used for the maintenance of one’s own four walls. This documentary location, along with its inhabitants, is the third protagonist in Gao Wendong’s directorial debut. The story is about the tender coming together of a prostitute and a young unemployed man. They spend the days together eating, folding small paper dragons, or watching television. They also share a bed, but in a sexless harmony. The inhospitality of their surroundings seems to have crossed over into their being. Like the district, it no longer has any real perspective in store. But the couple somehow manages to nurse little sparks of hope.

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