A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces

The images of after come first, from a surveillance camera in Wuhan, empty streets that only fill again on April 4th, 2020, when the siren sounds and people stand in silence. The images of before form the rest of the film, lengthy scenes of bright lights and bridges, construction sites and crowds, like a city symphony without music. The letters are addressed to a partner, a grandmother, a father and a daughter, all of them no longer here. Their words appear as text and the images they evoke settle over the ones onscreen, overlapping visions of the past of the same melancholy. So much water under the bridge, but the river keeps flowing. It doesn’t forget. (JL)