Factory Film

Between 2013 and 2014, surveillance cameras were secretly installed in front of the factory gates of several Chinese companies which had been recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In Factory Film, the recordings of these factory gates are examined alongside scenes from films set in and around factories in over a century of European, American and Chinese cinema. Beginning with the Lumieres’ film showing workers walking out of a factory gate, Ho Rui An investigates how different genres of “factory film” speak to the shifting historical relations between labour, technology and capital that have culminated in a contemporary scenography of late capitalism where there appears to be not enough workers leaving the factory.