A Song for You (China, 2020) [NYAFF 2021]
Sound designer/recordist and composer Dukar Tserang, who has been a close musical collaborator of filmmakers Pema Tseden and Gyal Sonthar, now stands alongside his aforementioned...
Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (China, 2020)
Early in Jia Zhangke’s 2006 work Dong, a documentary on artist Liu Xiaodong, the camera hones in on Liu in a medium wide shot walking...
Ash is Purest White (China/Japan/France, 2018) [AFI FEST 2018]
Ash is Purest White is no exception within Jia Zhangke’s cinema in terms of its sweeping scope. Platform (2000) charted the late 1970s to the...
The Hedonists (China, 2016)
Despite its title, viewers may still be surprised at how light-hearted Jia Zhangke’s recent short The Hedonists actually is, especially when compared to the director’s...
Mountains May Depart (China, 2015)
It’s unlikely that Jia Zhangke will ever make a totally straight genre movie, but he has nonetheless been drawn to populist, even pulpy, narratives of...
Jia Zhangke Was Here: Beijing World Park in 2015
Since opening to the public in 1993, Beijing World Park has attracted visitors with its promise of traveling around the globe in a single day,...
Still Life (China, 2006) and Up the Yangtze (China, 2008)
My current research project as Lecturer in Film Studies at Nanjing University is a study of the cinema of Lou Ye, the Sixth Generation Chinese...