Republic《我们的共和国》

Chinese hippie Eryang lives out his own version of communism in Republic, his six-square-meter apartment where young Beijing misfits hang about. Time comes to a halt for the drug-addled adolescents in this cluttered room, somewhere between psychedelic utopia and claustrophobic hell, dream and reality. Jia Jiang’s camera remains unobtrusive, an impressive achievement in such a cramped, swarming mess, as Eryang and his visitors wax poetic in a verbal cocktail of political philosophy and Internet babble. For visitors, Republic is a temporary escape; for Eryang, it is seemingly his only way of being, funded by online gambling and loans piled upon loans. Republic is a time capsule of the present for Chinese youth stuck in hopes and promises, afraid that if they open the curtains they might not like what they see.