Jia Zhangke is recognised internationally for his complex films about the downtrodden of the Chinese society
and the effect the country's rabid globalisation has on their lives.
Inside China he’s well known for showing the way for a new kind of independent cinema
and for his complex relationship with China’s Film Bureau who decides what films can be shown.
Born in Fenyang in Shanxi on May 24, 1970,
Jia Zhangke's small, rural hometown has been an inspiration throughout his career and a setting for many of his films.
After becoming an art student at Shanxi University,
he happened upon a screening of Chen Kaige's film Yellow Earth.
It had a profound impact and inspired him to become a filmmaker.
As a relative neophyte, Jia had trouble getting into the Beijing Film Academy as a director,
so he began studying film theory. Jia and his friends formed a film study group
with whom they'd exchange VHS copies of foreign films and watch them together.
One of the short films he made was the hour-long Xiao Shan Going Home,
which gave Jia his first taste of international fame.
It was shown in foreign festivals and even won an award in Hong Kong.
The cash prize financed his 1997 feature film debut Pickpocket.
In Pickpocket you can see the themes that would interest him for the rest of his career:
small town characters, speaking in their own dialects, and the influence a newly globalized China has on them.
It's portrayal of life angered the Film Bureau and led to Jia being unofficially blacklisted.
Platform, made in secret from the authorities, cemented Jia’s reputation in the arthouse world.
Over three hours long and told mostly in long, wide shots,
Platform tells a decades-spanning story of a travelling theatre troupe
and reflects the changes China went through in the years between late 1970s and the early 1990s.
The film won huge acclaim and has been often listed among the greatest films of the 21st century.
It also marked the first time Jia would work with actress Zhao Tao,
who would go on to star in most of his films and later to marry him...
Jia followed Platform with Unknown Pleasures, a story of small time gangsters.
Jia's first three films couldn't be officially released in China, but this changed with The World in 2004.
Jia decided he could still work within the Chinese system without changing his realist style,
meaning all future movies would also be officially approved.
I treat the situation in a calm way. I shoot my films only for the sake of the film itself and my true feelings.
I never consider if a shot will pass the censors or not.
After the films is completed, if I can pass the censors, and it can be shown on the big screen, that's great.
But otherwise, forget it. Because the work is still there and it's there somewhere.
The World, Jia’s first film set outside his home province of Shanxi
and made with a much larger budget than before, tells a story of employees in the Beijing World Park.
The park houses miniature versions of famous sites from all over the world
and works as a symbol for the modern Chinese society.
The World competed at the Venice Film Festival, but failed to win the coveted Golden Lion.
This was achieved by Jia's next film Still Life, that tells the story of a man searching for his daughter
and a woman searching for her husband in the area soon to be submerged by the Three Gorges dam.
Still Life signalled a stylistic change for Jia. The film contains short moments of surrealism
and Jia also toned down his objective wide shot style, choosing to investigate the location and characters
through medium close ups that wander throughout the scene.
After Still Life, Jia moved away from fiction filmmaking and directed the documentaries
Dong, a companion piece to Still Life that follows the painter Liu Xiaodong,
Useless, about China’s clothing industry, and I Wish I Knew, about Shanghai and its citizens.
He also directed 24 City, a film that combines documentary and fiction filmmaking.
Jia returned to fiction films with 2013's Touch of Sin.
In a stylistic departure, Touch of Sin, a violent tour de force of the ills affecting modern China,
saw Jia working in a somewhat more commercial vein.
I decided to make this film because there had been sporadic outbursts of violence in China.
I thought the events happenened by chance, but after researching online,
I realised there's a more fundamental reason behind these events.
So I thought I should talk about it through film.
We seldom address or discuss the subject of violence through art.
Jia's next film, Mountains May Depart, tells a multi-generational story
that reaches from his hometown Fenyang in 1999 all the way to Australia of 2025.
His latest film, Ash Is Purest White, had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
It stars Jia's frequent lead Zhao Tao in an acclaimed performance
as a woman who goes to jail for her gangster boyfriend and, after the sentence is over,
finds herself having been left behind both by her boyfriend and China at large.
Throughout his career, Jia Zhange has been a chronicler of changing China and observer of its ordinary citizens.
This has brought him worldwide acclaim and conflict with Chinese officials.
Jia himself sees his job as being something of a memory for his fast-moving country…
I play a role to document the changes and the disappearing memories
That we're experiencing right now contemporarily in China
So to me, as a filmmaker, I used to think that making film is about making dreams come true
It's about entertainment, but to me now, the more important thing is to use films to reflect reality.
To reflect the era of the time we live in and the memories that come with it.