BIOGRAPHY

J.P. Sniadecki works between the US and China as a filmmaker and anthropologist. From various locations throughout China to New York City junkyards to the Sonoran Desert borderlands, he collaborates with people and places to explore film's capacity for transfiguration of the discarded and transgression of the status quo. His films are in the permanent collection of New York 's Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and have been exhibited there and at the Whitney Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale, the Shenzhen Biennale, and the Guggenheim, as well as at international film festivals such as Berlin, BFI London, Locarno, New York, AFI, San Francisco, Rotterdam, Viennale, IDFA, Mar del Plata, Taiwan International Documentary Festival, and more.
 
All of JP’s films have won many, many awards. The film we’re seeing tonight, The Iron Ministry (2014), won the top prize at L 'Alternativa Film Festival and jury prizes at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Valdivia, and Camden.
 
JP serves on the editorial board of the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer  and he co-founded the traveling screening series "Cinema on the Edge," which showcases independent Chinese film around the world.  He has also written articles for Cinema Scope, Visual Anthropology Review, and the edited volume DV-Made China. A 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, J.P. earned a PhD at Harvard and is Professor in the Radio/TV/Film Department at Northwestern University

FRAMES OF REFERENCE, FALL 2024
JP SNIADECKI

PROGRAM ONE: Monday, October 7th - 7pm
Jepson Hall 118, Jepson School, University of Richmond

Foreign Parts (2010, JP Sniadecki & Verena Paravel)
A hidden enclave in the shadow of the New York Mets' new stadium, the neighborhood of Willets Point is an industrial zone fated for demolition. Filled with scrapyards and auto salvage shops, lacking sidewalks or sewage lines, the area seems ripe for urban development. But Foreign Parts discovers a strange community where wrecks, refuse and recycling form a thriving commerce. Cars are stripped, sorted and cataloged by brand and part, then resold to an endless parade of drive-thru customers. Joe, the last original resident, rages and rallies through the street like a lost King Lear, trying to contest his imminent eviction. Two lovers, Sara and Luis, struggle for food and safety through the winter while living in an abandoned van. Julia, the homeless queen of the junkyard, exalts in her beatific visions of daily life among the forgotten. The film observes and captures the struggle of a contested "eminent domain" neighborhood before its disappearance under the capitalization of New York's urban ecology.


PROGRAM TWO: Tuesday, October 8th, 2024
Jepson Hall 118, Jepson School, University of Richmond
 
The Iron Ministry (2015)
Filmed over three years on China's railways, J. P. Sniadecki's masterful documentary traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. THE IRON MINISTRY immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world's largest railway network.