Jia Zhangke
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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 -
The Past Inside the Present: Jia Zhangke on Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
With each new film, be it fiction or documentary, Jia Zhangke reasserts his status as one of the keenest chroniclers of China’s unprecedented—and unending—transformation. His latest, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, serves as a reminder that he is not alone on his mission. The documentary consists largely of interviews with three of China’s most important authors (plus the bereaved daughter of a fourth), whose reflections on how their artistry intersects with national history echo the social commentary resounding throughout Jia’s own work. Indeed, their words could just as well be Jia’s own, serving almost as a mission statement […]
by Forrest Cardamenis on May 26, 2021 -
“I Chose to Yell, You Chose to Whisper:” Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke at Pingyao International Film Festival
I was loitering around the ticket office of the Pingyao International Film Festival, waiting for the day to begin. This was the second morning of the festival and, like all international delegates, I was still adjusting to being in China. That adjustment is at least threefold: to the time zone, to the food and to the place. Already I had seen Jia Zhangke, festival founder and one of the greatest of all directors, mobbed by legions of fans. I had seen Zhao Tao standing tall and beautiful in the queue for the opening film, apparently invisible to those around her. […]
by Christopher Small on Nov 26, 2019 -
Jia Zhangke on Ash is Purest White, Deconstructing Genre and Learning Masculinity from John Woo Movies
The latest film from writer and director Jia Zhangke adds new insights to his previous titles like Still Life and A Touch of Sin. Again starring his wife Zhao Tao, Ash Is Purest White follows two outsiders for some twenty years as their fortunes flow and ebb in China’s new economy. Set partly in a gritty coal-mining town and partly on the Yangtze River at the moment when the then-under-contruction Three Gorges Dam was about to forever change the landscape, the film resembles the structure of Mountains May Depart in its use of three time periods and chapters. But, as Jia explains, what starts […]
by Daniel Eagan on Mar 13, 2019 -
NYFF 2018 Critic’s Notebook 3: Ash is Purest White, Three Faces
For otherwise underinformed viewers like myself, one of the functions of watching Jia Zhangke’s movies in real time as they came out was pedagogical: because I don’t read the news enough, I’m not sure I would have known about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam otherwise, let alone developed a visceral understanding of its impact. It was Jia’s extended project, in narrative and nonfiction films made during its construction, to continually integrate footage documenting the destruction of houses where some 1.4 million people lived, the subsequent flooding of valley living areas and the fallout from residents’ displacement. These images […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 3, 2018 -
“I Never Want To Be Someone Who’s Just In a Film So They Can Sell It”: Sylvia Chang on Driving Scenes, First-Time Directors and Her New Film Love Education
As a singer, actress, writer, and director, Sylvia Chang has been at the forefront of Asian culture since the 1970s. She has worked with directors like King Hu, Tsui Hark, Johnnie To and Jia Zhangke, and directed several of her own features. Chang is the subject of a 15-movie retrospective at the Metrograph running May 18–27. Along with films she directed, including Murmur of the Heart and 20 30 40, the series includes Shanghai Blues; That Day, on the Beach; Mountains May Depart, and Office, a musical based on her stage play Design for Living. Chang spoke with Filmmaker Magazine after the New York […]
by Daniel Eagan on May 23, 2018 -
Pingyao Year Zero: A Report from China’s First Authority-Approved, Privately Operated Film Festival
Much has been written on the proliferation of film festivals over the last two decades or so. Tentacular events in whose midst commercial imperatives and nobler intentions (or alleged such) dialectically coexist, festivals can be many things, but rarely do they feel as vital and unprecedented as the first edition of the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival (PYIFF). Unprecedented indeed it was, for the festival founded by the Chinese director Jia Zhangke is the first ever in China to be approved by the authorities but operated by a private company. This organizational set-up allowed its founder and […]
by Celluloid Liberation Front on Jan 2, 2018 -
Locarno Critic’s Notebook #1: The Ornithologist, Mister Universo, The Hedonists, All Clues Lead to Berlin
In the last two years, the main slate of the Locarno Film Festival had been nigh miraculously star-studded (in strictly arthouse terms), boasting premieres by the likes of Chantal Akerman, Pedro Costa, Lav Diaz and Andrzej Żuławski, to name but four of the most prominent. Perhaps inevitably, normality had to be reinstated eventually and this year presented less immediately mouth-watering offerings. Indeed, the best films in this first half of the festival were to be found outside of the international competition. Thus far, the most anticipated title has also been the most disappointing: Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues’ The Ornithologist, […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Aug 8, 2016 -
Time Travel via Production Design: Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart
Mountains May Depart begins as a love triangle, whose three connecting lines separate and recross across three segments in 1999 (two years after Jia Zhangke’s debut feature), 2014 and 2025. The 1999 opening brings us back to Jia’s native Shanxi, whose streets by now look very, very familiar to anyone who’s kept up with his work. As Tao, the woman at the center of the love triangle, Jia’s professional/personal partner Zhao Tao is introduced in period peasant style: strategically layered brightly lined sweaters, nothing too form-fitting or fashion-forward, hair straight and uncomplicatedly pulled-back. In 2014 — following marriage and divorce to wealthy Zhang Jinsheng (Yi Zhang) — she’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 11, 2016 -
Festen: The New York Film Festival 2015
For the first time in recent memory, it’s extremely difficult to select the top of the crop at this 53rd edition of the New York Film Festival (September 26-October 11), a question of too many contenders. I am not taking into consideration the tentpole films that anchor the festival, or any big studio movies, like Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. That’s another kettle of fish. Down below I list what I consider the crème de la crème (appropriate phrase, considering the usual Gallic slant) and review those titles briefly. Since they will all have commercial runs, I’ll be reviewing at length […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 25, 2015
