Dust and Algorithms

In the eastern suburbs of Chengdu, an old alley called Huaishu Street hides the joys and sorrows of three generations of a working-class family. Grandfather Li Mancang, a lathe worker at a state-owned machinery factory, entered the factory at the age of 16 and worked all his life, but was left behind by the times in the wave of layoffs; his father, Li Zhiqiang, stepped into the Internet trend, but was laid off by AI in his middle age; granddaughter Li Xiaoyu, an aboriginal in the algorithm era, lived a lively life by making short videos and reviewing recommendations, but never really caught anything. The old courtyard is going to be demolished. A box of yellowed certificates, a group photo in work clothes, and a story about a migrant worker who came to the city and his daughter who stayed behind made Xiaoyu understand for the first time: those ordinary people forgotten by the times hide an entire era, as well as the city's past, present, and future. When AI can reconstruct everything and calculate everything, what will be left for humans? It is something that algorithms can never calculate - the traces of a person's life, a remembered memory, and the real and clumsy connections between people. This is a pyrotechnic work about ordinary people "living well" in the tide of the times.