Symphony of the Heaven City

A story of contrasts between past and present, life and death, in Shanghai, the biggest city of the People's Republic of China. The film depicts national commemorations as a way of sanitizing and forgetting the past, the importance of spectacle in the creation of a national consciousness. In criticizing histories and wars built on nationalism and in depicting the growth of capitalism, the symbolic fireworks ironically celebrate the present as a memory of the Second World War, introducing an avant-garde way of experimental historical documentation. (Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival)