Youth is not built to last; like the light from a cigarette, it flickers softly at night. In The Last Year of Darkness, director Ben Mullinkosson captures this fragile glow with tenderness, moving to the rhythm of Chengdu’s queer club scene. His film lingers in the moments most would overlook. When the bass ceases, the silent taxi rides, and existential questions follow. Mullinkosson highlights those in-between moments between music and silence: where the exhilaration of living collides with the quiet awareness that nothing lasts forever. Parties end, friendships drift, and every night ends with the rise of dawn.
The pseudo-documentary started as a project between friends. Escaping L.A., Ben Mullinkosson wasn’t originally planning on making a film. However, when his friend Yihao asked him to make a film about him, he took up the challenge. Mullinkosson proceeded to shoot 600 hours of footage over 125 nights in three years. He captured the intricacies of Funky Town, a queer club, the lives of his friends, and those that intertwine. The 92-minute documentary follows a loose narrative, making the viewing experience more akin to a film than a documentary. There’s something radical about using documentary film to hold onto what’s meant to vanish. Mullinkosson doesn’t try to explain or moralize; he simply observes, preserving the pulse of a community just as it begins to fade. In doing so, his documentary becomes a testament to film’s unique power to capture fleeting worlds before they dissolve.
Objectivity of documentary work is especially challenging; the awareness of a camera forces performance, and every camera angle is a point of view. Despite this, The Last Year of Darkness reminds us that these are real people and real experiences. This is shown as subjects directly confront the camera, the audience, or even the director. Mullinkosson presents those filmed without any fluff. His observational style and lack of a voice-over narration invite viewers to connect to those messy and emotional moments. In doing so, the documentary reflects how we all experience these years: fragmented, intense, and deeply personal. We recognize ourselves in these in-between moments because they reveal the shape of becoming. While these moments make up a large portion of our lives, they’re often forgotten in the noise of modern life. By holding space for them, The Last Year of Darkness becomes more than a portrait of youth: it becomes a mirror, reflecting the uncertainties we have of ourselves, which we might not have answers to.
Many of the documentary’s passages reflect the ephemerality of youth, lived in a heightened present and marked by a rejection of the uncertainty that the future holds. It is a time of both exhilaration and quiet weight. Where every choice shapes who we become, even as the future feels uncertain and the present too brief. Nights like these often become a refuge from the weight of the day. In the blur of alcohol, drugs, and music, the future stops feeling like a looming responsibility and turns into something distant. For a while, that kind of reckless intensity feels, for a moment, like freedom. For a few fleeting hours, the weight of becoming gives way to the intensity of simply being. This transience of youth captured in The Last Year of Darkness reminds us how this freedom is also fraught. While the self feels malleable and every risk is a way of experimenting with identity, the burden of existence, and the awareness that each decision defines and limits who we might become, is gradually revealed.
Metaphorically, Funky Town itself serves as a reminder that youth isn’t forever. The club itself sits delicately on the construction site of a metro station. Its impending closure mirrors the fleeting nature of youth, where lights fade, the music stops, and the nights that you wish were endless dissolve into memory. Funky Town reflects the rhythm of growing up, a place where connection and self-discovery burn brightly, only for a short time. This reflects the need for fleeting sanctuaries where the uncertainties of becoming can be lived out in community. More than just a nightclub, Funky Town served as a refuge for those negotiating these transitions. It offered respite from the demands of adulthood, where music and dance create a shared language that allows people to experiment with identity, explore intimacy, and seek respite from the demands of a future that hasn’t yet settled into place.
Beyond Chengdu, spaces like Funky Town are vanishing in cities all over the world. Youth culture has always relied on temporary refuges: clubs, skate parks, parking lots, basements, places that sit just beyond the formal structures of society. These places foster experimentation with self and community but are often the first to disappear under the weight of an accelerationist world, where capital expansion and urban renewal move faster than culture can catch up. Their impermanence mirrors the fleeting intensity of the lives they contain, but their disappearance leaves behind a cultural silence that’s hard to replace. Everyone has their own version of Funky Town. That’s why watching The Last Year of Darkness feels like looking through an old photograph. It’s about the fragile architecture of memory and the way youth lingers long after it’s gone.
In the end, while The Last Year of Darkness pays homage to Chengdu’s nonconformists and the queer haven they inhabited, it also serves as a collective memory of growing up: the fleeting fire of youth, the spaces that nurture it, and the inevitability of its passing. Funky Town serves as a reminder that self-discovery often occurs in those brief, fragile moments of connection. The intense flicker of youth is precious because it doesn’t last; it carries a bittersweet urgency precisely because it’s temporary. You may feel torn as you watch the cast bid farewell to the space they held so dearly. However, the message left by that moment remains clear. Like the music that filled its rooms, youth rises, peaks, and fades into silence. Its impermanence is not a loss but a gift, proof that meaning is not found in permanence, but in the brilliance of what cannot be repeated.
