Rhythms from Life: Jia Zhangke

February 6–17, 2019

We survey the work of the internationally celebrated director whose films depict China’s relentless socioeconomic transformation and the people it leaves behind.

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  • Ash Is Purest White

  • Unknown Pleasures

  • A Touch of Sin

  • Platform

  • 24 City

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • A Touch of Sin

    • Sunday, February 17 7 PM
    Jia Zhangke
    China, 2013

    Jia 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 Cannes.

  • Ash Is Purest White

    • Sunday, February 10 6:30 PM
    Jia Zhangke
    China/France/Japan, 2018

    East Bay Premiere

    A gangster’s wife stands on her own in Jia’s expansive narrative of empowerment and survival, inspired by Hong Kong gangster films and set against the tumultuous changes in contemporary China. “Fierce, gripping, emotionally generous, and surprisingly funny” (Los Angeles Times).

    Jia Zhangke and Michael Berry in Conversation

  • Unknown Pleasures

    • Friday, February 8 2:30 PM
    Jia Zhangke
    China/Japan, 2002

    Imported 35mm Print

    Teenage life in a Chinese backwater forms “as true a picture of contemporary existence as we could hope for right now” (Film Comment).

    CANCELED: Jia Zhangke in Person

  • Platform

    • Thursday, February 7 7 PM
    Jia Zhangke
    Hong Kong/China, 2000

    Imported 35mm Print

    A performance troupe struggles to keep up during China’s 1980s move from communism to capitalism, and from peasant folk songs to electric breakdancing. “Might be the greatest film to come out of mainland China” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).

  • Xiao Wu

    • Thursday, February 7 2:30 PM
    Jia Zhangke
    China, Hong Kong, 1997

    Imported 35mm Print

    A small-time, undermotivated pickpocket finds himself on the wrong end of China’s economic leap forward. Jia’s debut feature was a milestone in contemporary Chinese cinema.

  • 24 City

    • Wednesday, February 6 7 PM
    Jia Zhangke
    China, 2008

    A Sichuan industrial complex is razed to make way for upscale condos. “Blending fiction with documentary, [Jia] brings huge stretches of long-repressed history to life on an intimate scale” (New Yorker).