Memories of ordinary Chinese citizens

Beijing Silvermine

A documentary about the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin, who since 2009 has salvaged discarded negatives from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing, negatives that were destined to destruction. His Beijing Silvermine archive, one of the largest archival projects in China, now encompasses over 850,000 anonymous photographs spanning the period from 1985 to 2005.