Useless

Juxtaposing three places, three modes, and three eras, all co-existing in contemporary China, Jia offers a sometimes devastating, but always compassionate, image of China's fashion world, the largest exporter of garments on the planet. Beginning in a mammoth factory filled with buzzing machines and breaking down workers, the film moves to its heart, the emerging fashion designer/artist Ma Ke, whose anti-luxurious, painstakingly crafted, and literally earth-bound “Wuyong” (“Useless”—intended more as a conceptual work of art than a prêt-à-porter) line links memory, history, and fabric and caused quite a stir at the 2007 Paris Fashion Week. The film’s final section, filmed in the Shanxi mining region, follows Chinese fashion even further to its roots, introducing us to two small-town tailors as they repair well-worn clothes that could tell a thousand tales. “It is a challenge to China’s rapid development and a kind of rebellion...it challenges the obliteration of memory, the over-exploitation of natural resources, and the speed at which all this is happening...Clothes, a layer of substance in close contact with our skins, also have memories.”— Zhang Ke Jia. “He peels away the layers to show the predicament of the country today, the weight of the past, the pressure of being a superpower, and the workers who toil for little gain.”–International Herald Tribune.

Free for members or with Museum admission. Film only: $8 general, $7 students and seniors.

Whitsell Auditorium