Speedway

J. P. Sniadecki

J.P. Sniadecki at the 2012 Viennale

J. P. Sniadecki (born 1979) is an American filmmaker.

Biography

Sniadecki was born in 1979 in Michigan.[1] He became interested in China through reading Chinese philosophy and first traveled there in 1999.[2] He attended Grand Valley State University for his undergraduate studies, completing his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and communications in 2002.[3]

He began his graduate studies at Harvard University in 2005, where he studied under Lucien Castaing-Taylor and joined the Sensory Ethnography Lab when it was started in 2006.[4] His short film Songhua, shot along the Songhua River a year after the Jilin chemical plant explosions, documents the relationship between local residents and the river.[5] His 2008 film Demolition documents migrant laborers working at a demolition site in Chengdu.[6]

Sniadecki (right) and People's Park co-director Libbie D. Cohn (left) at a 2012 screening

Sniadecki co-directed Foreign Parts (2010) with Véréna Paravel, whose 2008 film 7 Queens informed their work. It chronicles an auto junkyard in Willets Point, Queens.[7] His 2012 film People's Park, consisting of one long tracking shot, captures different types of activities at People's Park in Chengdu.[8]

Sniadecki co-directed El mar la mar (2017) with Joshua Bonnetta. The film looks at the physical traces of human activity in the Sonoran Desert near the Mexico–United States border.[9][10] Sniadecki was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.[11] His 2020 film A Shape of Things to Come, co-directed with Lisa Malloy, follows a man named Sundog who appears in El mar la mar. It includes thermographic footage from Jason De León of the Undocumented Migration Project.[12]

References

  1. ^ Cutler, Aaron (August 20, 2015). "Place of Passage: J.P. Sniadecki on The Iron Ministry". Filmmaker. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  2. ^ Jacobs, Jonas (March 15, 2016). "The POV Interview: JP Sniadecki on 'People's Park'". Point of View. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  3. ^ MacDonald 2019, pp. 452–453.
  4. ^ MacDonald 2019, p. 453.
  5. ^ MacDonald 2019, pp. 457–460.
  6. ^ MacDonald 2013, pp. 328–330.
  7. ^ MacDonald 2013, pp. 332–334.
  8. ^ Lim, Dennis (March 22, 2013). "Taking It to the Limit". The New York Times. p. AR12. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  9. ^ Kara 2022, pp. 89–103.
  10. ^ Balsom 2021, pp. 188–192.
  11. ^ "J.P. Sniadecki". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved September 19, 2024.
  12. ^ Kara 2022, p. 101.

Bibliography

  • Balsom, Erika (2020). "To Narrate or Describe?". In Scheible, Jeff; Redrobe, Karen (eds.). Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-1-5179-0889-8.
  • Kara, Selmin (2022). "Across the Sonorous Desert: Sounding Migration in El Mar la Mar". In Burgoyne, Robert; Bayrakdar, Deniz (eds.). Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media. Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 978-9-463-72416-6.
  • MacDonald, Scott (2013). American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-27561-4.
  • MacDonald, Scott (2019). The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-005212-6.