The resulting mix of image and interview, weariness and wonder, makes for a sober assessment of just how much change China's largest city has been through since the 1930s...
Read full articleEnding a minor but fascinating film in Jia's provocative oeuvre, the images of these sleepers are a prelude to the other troubled dreams of China (A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart, Ash Is the Purest White) that he has made since.
Read full articleI Wish I Knew functions as an admirable cinematic tone poem about a place and its times.
Read full articleJia is building not just a portrait of a city, but of a fragmented people - one story and memory at a time.
Read full article[A]n expansive exploration of Shanghai as a cultural center shaken by converging historical forces.
Read full articleThe poignant historical ironies of the Chinese director Jia Zhangke's documentary, commissioned by last year's Shanghai World Expo, begin with the title...
Read full articleA city symphony in a minor key, reminiscent of Pennebaker and Ruttman, that searches for the soul of a people and finds a microcosm of a century of upheaval and uncertainty.
Read full articleJia has a gift for exposing the underside of words like 'development', 'progress' or 'revolution', abstract political or economic programs that manifest at the cost of people's physical and cultural displacement.
Read full articleMaking its theatrical debut stateside a decade after bowing at the Cannes Film Festival, Jia Zhangke's documentary is a masterpiece worthy of (re)discovery.
Read full articleOne of the more poetic documentaries I have ever seen, I Wish I Knew is an ode to the impact one city has had, across so many decades, on so many lives.
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