Caught by the Tides
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Following the Currents: Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao on Caught by the Tides
Few major auteurs have successfully used footage from their previous films to create an entirely new one on equal footing with their greatest works, but for Jia Zhangke, whose project has in large part been to document changes in China’s landscape and society, such reflexive behavior makes particular sense. In Caught by the Tides, we witness the intertwined changes in his aesthetic sensibility as partly determined by the technology that’s enabled it, from mini DV to the cold, immaculate sheen of today’s professional grade digital cinema equipment. Moreover, we witness the changes in Zhao Tao—Jia’s collaborator since Platform (2000) and, […]
by Inney Prakash on Mar 18, 2025 -
Cannes 2024: Caught by the Tides, Misericordie, Grand Tour
Like Jia Zhangke’s Ash is Purest White, Caught by the Tides is a multi-decade triptych beginning in the early aughts and ending in the present, its past emerging from a sort of video diary practice he maintained up through 2006’s Still Life. As he explains, “I got my first digital video camera in 2001. I took it to Datong in Shanxi back then and shot tons of material. It was all completely hit-and-miss. I shot people I saw in factories, bus stations, on buses, in ballrooms, saunas, karaoke bars, all kinds of places.” There are numerous other similarities with 2018’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 29, 2024
