Director: Ben Mullinkosson
Nestled almost anonymously within the often cacophonous urban sprawl of Chengdu, China, queer club Funky Town is a beacon in the night for the area’s non-cis and vibrantly counter culture contingent. A neon-lit, sweaty concrete space typified by bass heavy dance beats and a clientele free to display their truest selves, be that via elaborate drag, bondage wear or trackies and a hoodie. In the bleary light of morning it is as unsuspecting as any such venue; the trash outside the only indication of the tears, jubilation and messiness of the night before.
At the time Ben Mullinkossom made his documentary The Last Year of Darkness, Funky Town sat on the doorstep of major inner city renovations; an urban renewal project that abuts its microclimate like a hulking symbol of China’s continual and inexpressive commercial development. Looking positively tiny in the shadow of such large-scale renovation and gentrification, Mullinkossom flips one assumed narrative; making Funky Town’s radical existence the tradition under threat, furthering the reality that such hubs for free expression have existed in some form for decades irrespective of the Chinese regimes that refuse their members rights and validity. That it is the bonhomie of individuals that continues to thrive, irrespective of the shadows that fall over them.
Mullinkossom presents a selection of loose fly-on-the-wall narratives, documenting heady nights, brief encounters, friendships made, mostly either against the backdrop of the pounding house beats or the beer and cigarette waft of the outdoor smoking area. A nominal through-line emerges foregrounding talented musician Kimberly; openly suicidal, volatile by sunup. Just as keenly though Mullinkossom will detour into distorted, strobe-lit hypnogogic expressions of the dance and performance art that typify Funky Town’s hothouse, or counterpoint this with candid talking heads or portraits of the broader landscape of Chengdu that persists oblivious to these nights of urgency.
Elsewhere, young DJs practice their mixes, sleep on mattresses on the floors of littered rooms, their patterns dictated by the club lifestyle. Queens preen and vogue, recalling documentaries like Funeral Parade of Roses, Paris is Burning or last year’s Kokomo City and the whole becomes a kind of collage or composite. An impression of the varying ways that a space like Funky Town can be the hub of a literal social network. Occasionally there’s a tension around the camera’s presence, born of a generation raised in the age of reality TV and the urge to play for a perceived audience, but this is mostly the exception to the rule, and Mullinkossom more often feels like an invisible interloper cataloguing unguarded moments – save one where the crew feel compelled to step in.
The Last Year of Darkness is about thriving as one’s self, but it is also keenly through the eyes of youth, about those particular years as a young adult where clubbing is a hot, sticky, exciting time, where almost nothing is as essential or kinetic. I’m old enough now to feel keenly for those years because the urge to participate has since passed, but Mullinkossom’s film conjured great nostalgia for their intoxicating immediacy, even if my own experiences were elsewhere, another city, another type of lifestyle. It is a paean to the importance of actual spaces for both individual and collective joy and expression, not to mention a conversation generated in the process about the possibilities of film to capture all those fleeting memories made and lost in the fug of a great night out.
What remains frustrating is MUBI’s continued pattern of picking up interesting queer narratives for distribution, and then relegating them fairly consistently to streaming alone (Please Baby Please, Rotting in the Sun etc.). There’s little reason The Last Year of Darkness wouldn’t have played well with even a modest cinematic run, and nothing to suggest it any less worthy of the physical releases that MUBI offers the films it does promote in such spaces.
Aren’t these the values of coming together for a disparate, mutual experience that The Last Year of Darkness advocates?
The Lost Highway Hotel 