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.
Read full descriptionA 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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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).
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).
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).
“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).
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.