Useless

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Audience Member Magnificent work once again from Jia. Stringing together three narratively disparate segments as he follows his theme of fashion in China, Jia refuses to include narration, giving the film an open-ended feel, as if he wants to show the viewer the Chinese fashion industry from all angles and allow us to draw our own conclusions. In doing so, the visual echoes and graceful tracking shots lend a poetic air to the issue at hand. Beautiful filmmaking. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Amazing documentary about the Chinese textile industry by Jia Zhang Ke, narrated by the excellent cinematography of Yu Likwai, whose camera effortlessly seems to float across the factory floors of Guangzhou and along the dirty roads of Shanxi. Jia's movie operates both within macro- and microlevel, comparing soulless assembly line production with the work of rogue fashion designer Ma Ke, but while Chinese fashion might count for something during Paris Fashionweek, it remains, as the title might suggest, useless to most people in China. What you wear becomes a matter of class, in China as anywhere else. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member Running my film fest at home, I enjoy watching "Useless", another meaningful production by Jia Jiangke, my favourite mainland director. Through exploring the details of clothes making, a genre seldom covered by film makers, "Useless" unleashes the value of those dedicated to this tedious process. Hand-made, uniquely-designed clothing is on the verge of extinction nowadays, except for the bizarrely exorbitant high-society haute couture. It's virtually non-existent on the Mainland. "Useless" is a sarcastic name of a film for something treasured by people who believe craftsmanship and creativity can transmit human feelings and preserve history. "Useless" interviewed a tailor-turned-miner on why he couldn't profess to be a tailor amid industrialization that breeds cost-effective mass production. "Useless" showed how designer Ma Ke built a Chinese brand of clothes made by hands and with care, instead of routine industrial production that kills the bond of makers and users. Workers lining up for a treatment at a clinic at a vast industrial estate in Guangzhou showed their wound got from garment factories. Humble miners and housewives in remote Fenyang (director's home town) walked a long way to get adjustors' help to re-sew their broken clothes. "Useless" scenes are rough, dusty and fanciless but workers' muddy hands and nails, moving needles of sewing machines, stained pipelines and dark coal mines are poetic and of beauty. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Audience Member gostei da reflexão sobre algo que em geral passa desapercebido ao pensamento e parece um tema vulgar. Da manufatura ao uso, o percurso da vestimenta é vasculhado e discutido nas suas bifurcações. Há a grande fábrica da produção e da vida em massa, há a estilista que resiste ao descartável dos tempos de consumo, há costureiras e alfaiates num mundo de produção em série que não tem mais lugar para eles. Tem algo de documentário ensaiado, dá a impressão de que as pessoas estão orientadas para serem reais do jeito que o diretor quer. Não sei se isso é muito honesto. Mas os longos planos, com panorâmicas lentas e minuciosas, te instiga a prestar atenção em mais e mais coisas. Atenção para as idéias da estilista Ma Ke. Sua preocupação é com a tendência destes tempos em tornarmos tudo ao nosso redor descartável e sem história. Já é urgente se duvidar da sustentabilidade deste modelo, mas o que Ma Ke observa é mais profundo: Estamos esvaziando o mundo de significado. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member Beautiful, impressionistic and thoughtful. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/23/23 Full Review Audience Member What a disappointment after seeing "Still Life" last year. Lost focus from the garment vs tailoring industry he set out to portrait. The last 20 mins seemed to be an ad hoc add-on. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Useless

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