Jia Zhangke: Filmmaker in Residence

November 7–30, 2024

One of the world’s foremost filmmakers, Jia Zhangke, joins us for a weeklong residency during which he will engage in conversations with leading experts about his distinctive body of work, which reflects sweeping cultural and economic change in China since the late 1990s.

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Platform
I Wish I Knew
Caught by the Tides
A Touch of Sin
Unknown Pleasures

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Films

Caught by the Tides
Jia Zhangke
China, 2024
Thursday, November 7 7:00 PM
Jia Zhangke and Michael Berry in Conversation
Jia Zhangke delivers an epic look at the romantic destiny of his perennial heroine, Qiao Qiao. Spanning twenty-one years of a country going through profound transformation, the film provides a new perspective on contemporary China.
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Xiao Wu
Jia Zhangke
China, Hong Kong, 1997
Friday, November 8 3:00 PM
Jia Zhangke and Michael Berry in Conversation
A small-time, undermotivated pickpocket finds himself on the wrong end of China’s economic leap forward in Jia Zhangke’s debut feature, a milestone in contemporary Chinese cinema.
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Platform
Jia Zhangke
Hong Kong, China, 2000
Friday, November 8 7:00 PM
Jia Zhangke and Michael Berry in Conversation
A performance troupe struggles to keep up during China’s 1980s move from communism to capitalism. “Might be the greatest film to come out of mainland China” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).
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Still Life
Jia Zhangke
China, 2006
Saturday, November 9 3:00 PM
Jia Zhangke and Weihong Bao in Conversation
The controversial Three Gorges Dam project frames two stories in Jia Zhangke’s examination of a city under (de)construction. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
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Unknown Pleasures
Jia Zhangke
China, Japan, 2002
Saturday, November 9 7:00 PM
Jia Zhangke and Andrew F. Jones in Conversation
A sympathetic, impressionistic portrait of youth so alienated that they’ve nothing to rebel against, much less for, Unknown Pleasures is “as true a picture of contemporary existence as we could hope for now” (Kent Jones, Film Comment).
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I Wish I Knew
Jia Zhangke
China, Netherlands, 2010
Sunday, November 10 2:30 PM
Jia Zhangke and Michael Nylan in Conversation
Jia Zhangke explores the contested city of Shanghai, as witnessed through citizens, politicians, criminals, exiles, artists, and especially filmmakers. Both a historian’s and a cinephile’s dream, I Wish I Knew is as much about Shanghai in cinema as it is about Shanghai.
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A Touch of Sin
Jia Zhangke
China, 2013
Sunday, November 10 6:30 PM
Jia Zhangke and Daniel O’Neill in Conversation
Jia Zhangke takes on the collateral damage of China’s maniacal growth, explosively restaging four violent deeds to illustrate everyday citizens pushed to the edge—of the economy. Winner of the Best Screenplay prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
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Ash Is Purest White
Jia Zhangke
China, France, Japan, 2018
Wednesday, November 13 7:00 PM
Jia Zhangke and Iggy Cortez in Conversation
A gangster’s wife stands on her own in Jia Zhangke’s expansive narrative of empowerment and survival, inspired by Hong Kong gangster films and set against the tumultuous changes taking place in contemporary China. “Fierce, gripping, emotionally generous, and surprisingly funny” (Los Angeles Times).
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24 City
Jia Zhangke
China, 2008
Saturday, November 16 4:30 PM
A Sichuan industrial complex is razed to make way for upscale condos. “Blending fiction with documentary, [Jia Zhangke] brings huge stretches of long-repressed history to life on an intimate scale” (New Yorker).
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The World
Jia Zhangke
China, Japan, 2004
Thursday, November 21 7:00 PM
A Vegas-style theme park in Beijing provides the lonely-planet setting for Jia Zhangke’s parable on China’s cultural renovation: fake landscapes, real problems. “Highly original, brilliantly conceived” (Tony Rayns).
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Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
Jia Zhangke
China, 2020
Saturday, November 23 7:00 PM
Three of China’s greatest living authors share their stories and memories in Jia Zhangke’s tribute to storytelling and the connection between intellectual thought and working-class labor. “A spiritual depiction of China. Illuminating” (South China Morning Post).
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Mountains May Depart
Jia Zhangke
China, France, Japan, 2015
Saturday, November 30 6:00 PM
“With audacious leaps of time and intimate echoes spanning a quarter century of intertwined lives, the director Jia Zhangke endows this romantic melodrama with vast geopolitical import” (Richard Brody, New Yorker).
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Jia Zhangke: Filmmaker in Residence

November 7–30, 2024

“One of the most important filmmakers in the world today.” —National Public Radio

When Jia Zhangke (born 1970) visited SFMOMA and BAMPFA for a whirlwind trip in February 2019, we extended an invitation to him to return to UC Berkeley and participate in a filmmaker residency that would allow Bay Area filmgoers and the campus community an opportunity to hear him speak about his films over the course of a week. We are delighted that this visit will occur on November 7–13, with Jia participating in a series of onstage conversations. We will journey with him through the work he has made across an extremely consequential period of modern Chinese history—1995 to present.

“One of the most important filmmakers in the world today.” —National Public Radio

Born and raised in the dusty mining town of Fenyang, Shanxi Province (a region he returns to in nearly all his work), Jia studied painting and literature before gaining admission to the Beijing Film Academy. His feature debut, Xiao Wu, earned the prestigious Dragons and Tigers Prize at the 1997 Vancouver Film Festival, starting a cascade of praise and awards that included Venice’s Golden Lion (Still Life, 2006), Cannes’s Best Screenplay (A Touch of Sin, 2013), and inclusion in the competition for Cannes’s Palme d’Or (Ash Is Purest White, 2018; Caught by the Tides, 2024). In 2017 Jia and Marco Müller cofounded the Pingyao International Film Festival in Shanxi Province, which continues to this day.

One of the leaders of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, Jia has managed to work independently, often with international financing, and was an early adopter of HD video, allowing him greater creative freedom from the more restrictive state-sanctioned film studios. Jia’s films reflect a contemporary China in constant change. Working in narrative and documentary, he creates works that center on the tension between tradition and globalization and present a remarkable chronicle of China’s recent history.

—Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator

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Presented in partnership with the Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley.

Thanks to Casper Liang; Stephen Best, Rebecca Egger, Townsend Center for the Humanities; and Emily Woodburne, Brian Belovarac, and Ben Crossley-Marra, Janus Films.