China Illustrata
2012-2019
Video, Photography, Illustration, Documentary, Journalism, Audio
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China Illustrata is a documentary project about contemporary China.
The title comes from a book written, illustrated, and published by Athanasius Kircher in 1667,
a comprehensive study of Chinese people, nature, and mythology, realized by combining cartography,
mythological stories, and information collected from pilgrims and travelers.
#sinology #dystopia #eastern empire
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Appendix
Sixteen Thousand Pigs
Mòmíngqímiào
X.U.A.R. The periphery of the Kindom
Hong Kong, Ga Yau
The celestial Burial
Manuscripts don’t burn
The Bamboo Forest
[2012-15]
[2017]
[2012-13]
[2019]
[2013]
[2022]
[2016]
CHAPTER IV
Hong Kong, Ga Yau [2019]
Hong Kong, Ga Yau
is a documentary about the protest movement that shook Hong Kong in 2019.
The movement was triggered by a proposed law that would have allowed the extraditions to mainland China of Hong Kong citizens, but soon it morphed into a larger revolt against China’s control over the semi-autonomous city.
Duration: 50 min
Format: 4K/UHD
Year: 2020
Awards:
- Visioni dal Mondo, Rai Cinema Prize 2020
- IFA London 2021, Best Feature Documentary
Screening:
- Visioni dal Mondo 2020
- DIG Award 2020, category Long Reportage
- Roma Cinema Doc 2021
- IFA London 2021
- 19° Festival internazionale Segni della Notte 2022
- Rome Independent Cinema Festival 2022
- Terra di Tutti Film Festival 2022
- Liberty Films International festival 2024
Distribution:
Feel Sale
From Italy you can watch the documentary
on RAIPLAY platform.
Hong Kong, Ga Yau
is also a series of photos and a newsprint photo-book
Exhibitions / Featured:
- Belfast Photo Festival 2021
- FORMAT International Photography Festival 2021
- Lenzburg Photo Festival 2020
- About Desire (in collaboration with Ragusa Photo Festival) Portfolio mention 2020
CHAPTER I
Sixteen Thousand Pigs
[2012-15]
Sixteen Thousand Pigs is a photo-book developed in Tokyo during the 2018 Atlas lab photo-book workshop by Alex Bocchetto and Yumi Goto, in collaboration with Akina and Reminders Photography Stronghold.
35 pictures shot between 2012 and 2014 and a short story about 16000 pigs in a river.
Format: soft cover / handbound
Size: A4
Number of pages: 72
Number of pictures: 35
Number of characters: 3502
Exhibitions
- Trieste Photo Festival 2019
- Belfast Photo Festival 2019 - Shortlisted
- Athens Photo Festival 2019 - Shortlisted
CHAPTER III
X.U.A.R. The periphery of the kingdom
[2012- 2013]
Xinjiang is the most Western region of China. It has long been dealing with ethnic tensions between the Uighurs (a Muslim and Turkish-speaking ethnic group) and China’s main ethnic group, the Han.
The tension escalated with riots in 2009 during which hundreds of people lost their lives on both sides: Uighurs killed by the Chinese army while demonstrating on the streets of Urumqi, and the Han killed by the retaliation that followed. Over recent years, many terrorist attacks have shocked the region, initially targeting police forces and institutions, and recently even ordinary Chinese citizens.
China responded with the suppression of religious rights and according to numerous sources the mass arrest of millions of Uighurs confined in “re-education” camps.
X.U.A.R. is the attempt to understand how such different groups of people coexist today in China, how Uighurs will cope with the Government’s try to erase their culture in favor of the “Chinese harmony”. The struggle to save their traditions, language and culture in the frame-set of a country that keeps on seeing diversity as a threat to its own stability.
Exhibition
Bursa Photo Festival 2017, Turkey
CHAPTER VI
Manuscripts don't burn
[2022]
A series of illustrations inspired by the Great Firewall, the main legislative and technological tool for mass internet censorship in China.
CHAPTER II
mòmíngqímiào
5 channel video / undetermined duration
[2017]
Excerpt
CHAPTER V
The celestial burial
Found photography
In 2013, while living in Shanghai, I collected a bunch of lost and discarded photographs,
sometimes during walks around flea markets, sometimes in ruined neighborhoods of the city, the historical ones that were being demolished to shape the new skyline, to make way for luxury condos and shopping centers.The provenance of the photographs was unknown. I was fascinated by the mystery of collecting memories of strangers, trying to imagine and reconstruct stories and characters.
In one of these walks I found an odd series of pictures:
7 prints, 6 by 6 cm, harsh light, dark silhouettes on a plateau, around a corpse, torn apart.
It took me some time and a bit of research to understand.
As I try to reconstruct the story behind the pictures, the celestial burial talks about ancient rituals, about found photography, memories, authorship, and copyright, about the importance of print in a digital era, about voyeurism and morbid pictures, and it talks about the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The celestial burial is archeology of images and improvised ethnographic research:
finding, collecting, researching, understanding, and questioning again.
Sky burials are a funeral custom of the Tibetan people.
APPENDIX I
The Bamboo Forest
Set of 7 illustrations on cotton paper
[2016]
APPENDIX II
Shan Shui [Extract]
Single channel video - 16 min
#Landscape #Sound design and drone music
Zhong [Extract]
Single channel video - 18 min
#Crowd #Sound design