PARKLAND OF DECAY AND FANTASY

Technology and spirituality are parallel forces in an abandoned and possibly haunted Chinese amusement park once taken over by outsider artists. If it is true that at the moment of death, consciousness sends out its last waves of thought into the universe, much like a text message sent from a mobile phone, the old theme park may be an antennae receiving signals from the beyond. Physical, spiritual and virtual realities are layered as the film explores how the gap between the dreams and realities of its wayward residents resonates with the highs and lows of China’s rapid economic growth over the past 30 years.

“With a heart to be mindless on the frontiers between fiction and reality, narrative and documentary, cinema and moving images, Zhu believes in a process where the story emerges from the characters, the spiritual rises from the mundane, and the subconscious collides with the conscious. He believes it is such process that sets him free on the ride of acute instincts and establishes a bodily connection between the heart and mind, the product of which brings people to the bed of honest human emotions and another level of sensory state in relaxation.”

DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, CINEMATOGRAPHY, FILM EDITING, PRODUCER: Chenliang Zhu. MUSIC: Jinsfake, Dark Ducks, Wenliang Zhang & Shi Fei. CAST: Wenliang Zhang, Francesco Chen, Jia Sun, Moxiang Qin, Ruiming Jia, Grandma He, Yongkang Wang, Guangyong Jia, Yulu Wu, Youzhong Jin, Yi Jin, Xiaoqian Wu, Chenliang Zhu.