Desultory Narrative
Who gets to tell the story of a place, and what does everyday life look like alongside that larger story?
Made in Tai'an, the city at the foot of Mount Tai where she was born, Desultory Narrative is an observational documentary filmed across the summer of 2024, as the city considered how to tell its own history for a new city-centre museum.
The film has a companion body of photographs, shown as Desultory Narrative at PorterShed.
- Title
- Desultory Narrative
- Year
- 2025
- Genre
- Documentary
- Runtime
- 73 min
- Director
- Xiaojian Zheng
- Writer
- Xiaojian Zheng
- Filmed
- Tai'an, China, summer 2024
- Release
- 1 April 2025, Ireland
- Screened
- East Asia Film Festival Ireland, online
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
An intimate observational portrait of a small city at the foot of Mount Tai.
Moving between an international mountain-climbing festival, a night market, public parks, villages, a museum under construction, street stalls and a shopping mall, the film assembles the plain, everyday rhythms of civic life into a single, meandering portrait of place. It moves without commentary or interview; nothing is staged for the lens.
The film quietly asks who gets to tell the story of a place, and what everyday life looks like alongside that larger story. It leaves the question open, the way the city itself remains open, unfinished and still being lived in.
