The Last Year of Darkness

When North American filmmaker Ben Mullinkosson arrived in Chengdu in 2010, he was amazed to discover a China that was radically different from the one he had imagined, with ineffable political limitations and a tenacious obsession with money. There, he fell in love with a community formed around Funky Town, the last bastion of queer and underground partying, hidden under the cranes of construction sites and about to disappear to make way for a metro. Here, people party and wander, emancipating themselves from the traumas of conventional society, whether they are ravers, drag performers, 20-year-old queer DJs, or lovers. A skater himself, Mullinkosson shares and captures with strength and affection the transience of this youth and its moments of doubt, disorientation, self-destruction and epiphany, in a suspended state of time. With The Last Year of Darkness (VdR-Pitching 2021), he delivers an ode to freedom, the portrait of an ephemeral capsule, dancing while waiting to disappear. 

Emilie Bujès