J.P. Sniadecki, a 2009-2010 Rosenberg Institute visiting scholar, and Verena Paravel were awarded “Leopard for Best First Feature” and “Special Jury Prize – Filmmakers of the Present” at this month’s Locarno Film Festival for their film Foreign Parts.

Foreign Parts documents the struggle of a contested Queens, NY neighborhood before its demolition and disappearance under the capitalization of New York’s urban ecology.

Sniadecki and Paravel are both Harvard Film Study Center fellows. Sniadecki’s 2008 documentary Chaiqian (Demolition) focuses on migrant labor and urban space in Chengdu, Sichuan province in China. It received the Joris Ivens Award at the 2009 Cinéma du Réel documentary film festival in Paris and has been shown around the world.

J.P. Sniadecki is a doctoral candidate in the Social Anthropology Department at Harvard University with an emphasis on Chinese society and sensory ethnography, and a former Rosenberg Institute visiting scholar.