ANIMATED FEED: MACONDO - DIRECTED BY ZILIA FENG

Macondo from Zilai Feng on Vimeo.

1st year short in CalArts.

Macondo is the town where the story of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Garcia Marquez took place.

" 'God damn it!' he shouted, Macondo is surrounded by water on all sides.' " --- "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

The story of this film takes place in the most desolate part of a train trip, where nothing on the ground can be seen except for a broken house. When this house is totally disconnected from the other parts of the trip --- the cities, the countries and forests, just like they are also disconnected from one another --- the train joints them together. The train is the only witness of the existence of the house, and also the only media that provides the possibility of connection between the isolated. Only when the train noise gets into his ears, he who lives in the house knows that he is not irrelevant to the rest of the world. He might have witnessed the rise and fall of a remote town, which was built along the track but then disappeared without a trace; or he might have witnessed nothing, for he has been here all alone since the beginning of time. The noise of the train gets into his dreams at night, and wakes him up in the morning. The boundary between dream and reality is never clear; the time flows no more. People on the train might have remembered this house, however, forgetting it at the same moment they turn away their eyes. The connection, as a matter of fact, is never built. The house exists, but it does not; it does not, but it does --- only in the forgotten memories.