Pirated Copy

“Sixth Generation” director He Jian-jun (Butterfly Smile, The Postman) takes to the streets of Beijing, where the black market in pirated DVDs has created a remarkable subset of cinema-savvy citizens. Bootleggers haunt the city, selling their illegal wares as part of an underground economy sustaining those ignored by the Chinese miracle. They're hawking titles by Tarkovsky, Bergman, and Kiarostami, films often available only through this forbidden traffic. He's edgy feature imagines the pirated discs as a commerce in voyeurism and alienation, cinephiliac though they may be. There's the sexually deprived film professor who's teaching a course on Almodovar, but can't procure the films legally; the unemployed couple who mistake the mess of their lives for the hyper-heroics of Pulp Fiction; the prostitute who exchanges professional favors for a boxful of contraband; and others coveting the stolen discs of desire. Starkly realistic, Pirated Copy gives us a fictive portrait of a society where fantasy thrives as an illicit marketplace of images.

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