J.P. Sniadecki

J. P. Sniadecki (born 1979) is an American filmmaker.

Sniadecki was born in 1979 in Michigan.[ 1] He became interested in China through reading Chinese philosophy and first traveled there in 1999.[ 2] He attended Grand Valley State University for his undergraduate studies, completing his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and communications in 2002.[ 3]

He began his graduate studies at Harvard University in 2005, where he studied under Lucien Castaing-Taylor and joined the Sensory Ethnography Lab when it was started in 2006.[ 4] His short film Songhua, shot along the Songhua River a year after the Jilin chemical plant explosions, documents the relationship between local residents and the river.[ 5] His 2008 film Demolition documents migrant laborers working at a demolition site in Chengdu.[ 6]

Sniadecki co-directed Foreign Parts (2010) with Véréna Paravel, whose 2008 film 7 Queens informed their work. It chronicles an auto junkyard in Willets Point, Queens.[ 7] His 2012 film People's Park, consisting of one long tracking shot, captures different types of activities at People's Park in Chengdu.[ 8]

Sniadecki co-directed El mar la mar (2017) with Joshua Bonnetta. The film looks at the physical traces of human activity in the Sonoran Desert near the Mexico–United States border.[ 9] [ 10] Sniadecki was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.[ 11] His 2020 film A Shape of Things to Come, co-directed with Lisa Malloy, follows a man named Sundog who appears in El mar la mar. It includes thermographic footage from Jason De León of the Undocumented Migration Project.[ 12]