faced a dry chaos in ningxia and called it art

i wasn’t exactly planning to film here but something about the way the heat bent the air made me think this could work. i just checked and it’s 23 degrees which is like a desert for a film set no humidity to complicate anything. the kind of place where you’ll see people sweating less than you expect. if you get bored ningxia’s neighbor towns have that one café with the wall of vintage posters someone told me is a mystery. i heard that the old cinema here is falling apart but still has killer sound it’s something a local warned me about. i saw a guy outside yelling aboutemorriences and it felt like a scene from a movie i’d forgotten i was making.

i took a few shots of the dusty streets and the way the sun hit the cracks in the pavement. one image showed a street vendor with a cart that looked like it belonged in a 70s film. another was of a wall with graffiti that read ‘no planes here’ which felt like a joke or a warning. i tried to find a second location but the only thing that stood out was a abandoned theater with a sign that said ‘closed for repairs’ which is probably a cover for something more interesting.

‘this place is a dump but the acoustics are perfect for a horror film’ - someone told me that while they were pretending to be a local

‘if you film here you’ll get chased by a group of angry tourists with smartphones’ - a drunk person at a bar

i also found a spot where the heat made the air shimmer and thought it’d be cool to film a scene where characters are literally melting. the problem was no one wanted to wear fake skin. the locals were more interested in telling me about the nearest town’s annual karaoke night which i guess is a thing. if you get bored ningxia’s neighbor towns have that one café with the wall of vintage posters someone told me is a mystery.

‘the real magic here is the lack of tourists’ - a person who clearly hadn’t been here

i linked to a yelp for the café and a tripadvisor for the old cinema. the yelp review said something about ‘authentic chaos’ which felt accurate. the tripadvisor had a photo of the cinema’s entrance with a note from a user saying ‘this place is a time capsule but the owners are terrible’. i didn’t film anything there but the idea of a time capsule in this heat felt strange.

the maps showed a lot of empty roads and i thought about how this place could be a backdrop for a low-budget film. the only problem was the weather kept messing with the camera. i tried to use a lens that could handle the heat but it kept overheating. i ended up using a makeshift setup with a towel and a fan which didn’t work well. it was chaos but that’s what made it real.

i’ll probably leave this place with more questions than answers. maybe the next city will have better conditions. or maybe i’ll just go back here and pretend i’m in a different country. either way this is the kind of experience that might end up in a film or at least a really bad joke.

‘if you survive here you’ll be a legend’ - someone who was clearly lying

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