Ben Mullinkosson's 'The Last Year of Darkness' on Mubi shows 'strength in vulnerability' in Chengdu club scene

When filmmaker Ben Mullinkosson was living in Los Angeles, burnt out from working in advertising, he set his sights on Chengdu, China, a great skateboarding city. That's when he started going to the now-closed club Funky Town and the film The Last Year of Darkness started to form (now streaming on Mubi).

"Everyone was just excited about the film because Funky Town was in this really weird place," Mullinkosson explained to Yahoo Canada. "It's this bar hidden behind a construction site, and it's really fun and really secret and really special, and everyone was like, 'We should be documenting this. We should be making a film about this moment.'"

For the immersive, pulsating and intimate documentary, Mullinkosson spent five years filming people he interacted with in this underground clubbing community, featuring stories of DJs, ravers, drag performers, people having financial issues, mental health struggles, and family or relationship troubles.

"We filmed nine people. We shot for 125 days," Mullinkosson said. "At first it was like, we're filming with one hand and then a drink in the other hand, partying and filming at the same time."

"Then as the story developed, we would film during the day and we would bring in more crew members, and we would have a bigger set, depending on what we needed to film. We weren't going to make a film, I didn't have the intention to make a film. At first it was kind of like, I was escaping, so I escaped into this party world."

'Thank you for your vulnerability'

In The Last Year of Darkness, Mullinkosson shows Funky Town as this place where people can openly be themselves and escape any of the problems they are facing outside the club.

There are moments in the film that perfectly find that balance between showing carefree people in their 20s and expressing their real struggles. A great example is one scene where there's a deep conversation happening between two people, and someone starts vomiting in a cup right behind them.

"We have this connection where we push the limits and it brings us closer together," Mullinkosson said. "Different people react in different ways, I think my mom was like, 'You have to take the vomiting out. That's disgusting.' But I'm like no, that's the most important part. We need it."

As filming began to expand and develop, Mullinkosson admitted that there were some apprehensions throughout the whole process, but the filmmaker was always open to changing things based on the feedback from the people we see on the screen.

"I would meet with every single one of the protagonists during the process and we would watch their footage, as well as everyone else's, and have conversations about what narratives we wanted to include, and not include, in the film," he explained. "We're writing the story together and I think ... it was honestly the most fun part of the project, because everyone involved is a friend of mine, we're all really close friends."

"Now we've travelled to Copenhagen for the premiere, and then also we went to [the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam] for the premiere. ... People are going up to all the protagonists being like, 'Thank you for your vulnerability, ... it's just so brave.'"

There's one scene that was particularly "controversial" for Mullinkosson, when one of the film's stars, Kimberley, is on a rooftop having a fight with her boyfriend.

"When we filmed that we couldn't hear, there were sound problems, so we didn't know what [they] were talking about, and then when she stood up we were obviously like, 'OK this is a dangerous situation,'" he explained. "We stopped [filming] and then later, when we heard the conversation, we were like, oh there's a lot going on that we didn't know about."

"We watched the material and at first Kimberley didn't want to use the footage, because she felt embarrassed about it, and then years went by and Kimberley and I, we would talk about it sometimes, or we rewatched the footage a couple times, and then she eventually came to the conclusion that Yihao is the drag queen and [Kimberley is] the drama queen. And she got really excited about it, because it's real life, but she's playing a role."

Mullinkosson believes that documentary filmmaking, broadly, is "a presentation of who you are when the cameras are rolling."

"I think documentaries are always viewed as, this is real life, this is happening, but really it's whatever the protagonists are presenting as themselves to the camera," he said. "And beyond that, it's a collaboration."

For Mullinkosson, now that The Last Year of Darkness is out in the world, something that stands out to the filmmaker is "strength in vulnerability," and being able to connect with others through our struggles.

"When we are vulnerable and talk about the struggles that we're going through, the amount of people that can relate to it and the solidarity that we feel from being vulnerable, and those experiences, it's really inspiring," he said.