The Moving Image Source Calendar is a selective international guide to retrospectives, screenings, festivals, and exhibitions.
Descriptions are drawn from the calendars of the presenting venues.
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Jia Zhangke: A Retrospective
March 5–20, 2010 at
Museum of Modern Art
, New York
Jia Zhangke (b. 1970, Fenyang, Shanxi, China) has emerged as the leading figure of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers and one of international cinema's most celebrated artists. Merging gritty realism with elegance and originality, he tackles contemporary subject matter in both documentary and fiction projects-and often fuses the two approaches to great effect. In little more than a decade he has created a body of work that reflects the enormous changes of the past fifty years of Chinese society. Much admired by critics and an inspiration to fellow filmmakers, Jia has developed an original, ever-evolving style marked by fluid camera movement and a porous, symbiotic relationship between the real and the imagined. His films-characterized by their plainspoken directness and postmodern aesthetic and peopled with amateurs as well as professional actors-illuminate the transformations taking place in China's environment, architecture, and society by placing everyday people in the midst of a landscape in turmoil. Aiming to restore the concrete memory of place and to evoke individual history in a rapidly modernizing society, the filmmaker recovers the immediate past in order to imagine the future. His films reflect reality truthfully, while simultaneously using fantasy and a distinct aesthetic to pose existential questions about life and status in a society in flux. Through rigorous specificity, his art attains universal scope and appeal.
Featured Works:
Spring in a Small Town (Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun, Fei Mu, 1948); Xiao Shan Going Home (Xiao Shan Hui Jia, Jia Zhangke, 1995); Pickpocket (Xiao Wu, Jia Zhangke, 1997); Platform (Zhan Tai, Jia Zhangke, 2000); In Public (Gong Gong Chang Suo, Jia Zhangke, 2001); The Condition of Dogs (Gou De Zhuang Kuang, Jia Zhangke, 2001); Unknown Pleasures (Ren Xiao Yao, Jia Zhangke, 2002); The World (Shi Jie, Jia Zhangke, 2004, pictured); East (Dong, Jia Zhangke, 2006); Still Life (San Xia Hao Ren, Jia Zhangke, 2006); Useless (Wu Yong, Jia Zhangke, 2007); 24 City (Er Shi Si Cheng Ji, Jia Zhangke, 2008); Black Breakfast (Jia Zhangke, 2008); Cry Me a River (He Shang De Ai Qing, Jia Zhangke, 2008)
Program information:
