Jia Zhangke

Director

May 24, 1970 (56 years)

Fenyang, Shanxi, China

Biography

Jia Zhangke (Chinese: 贾樟柯; pinyin: Jiǎ Zhāngkē, born 24 May 1970; Fenyang) is a Chinese film and television director, screenwriter, producer, actor and writer. He is the dean of the Shanxi Film Academy of Shanxi Media College and the dean of the Vancouver Film School of Shanghai University. He graduated from the Literature Department of Beijing Film Academy. He is generally regarded as a leading figure of the "Sixth Generation" movement of Chinese cinema, a group that also includes such figures …

Filmography

7.2

A Touch of Sin

Four people in different provinces are driven to violent ends: An angry miner is enraged by corruption in his village. A migrant discovers the possibilities of owning a firearm. A receptionist is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. A young factory worker goes from one job to the next.

7.2

The Hedonists

The closure of an unprofitable state-run coal mine in Shanxi, China forces three middle-aged men who worked there to search for employment elsewhere.

6.9

Ash Is Purest White

Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.

6.5

Unknown Pleasures

Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.

5.1

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

7.2

Still Life

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

2.2

Stories on Human Rights

20 short films about human rights.

7.0

Mountains May Depart

The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.

6.8

Caught by the Tides

Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him.

7.2

Pickpocket

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.

7.0

The World

At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing another woman.

7.0

24 City

As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experiences.

6.9

Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue

Filmmaker Jia Zhangke chronicles his local literature festival in Shanxi, China which includes a multi-generational roster of the country's most esteemed writers.

6.5

3.11 A Sense of Home Films

In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day.

6.6

I Wish I Knew

Focuses on the people, their stories and architecture spanning from the mid-1800s, when Shanghai was opened as a trading port, to the present day.

7.1

Platform

China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

5.9

Xiao Shan Going Home

Xiao Shan, a temporary worker at the Hongyuan Restaurant, has just been fired by his boss Zhao Guoqing. Deciding to leave Beijing and returns to his home in Anyang, he goes to see a series of people from his hometown who have also been living in Beijing-construction workers, train ticket scalpers, university students, attendant, prostitutes-but no one wants to go back with him. Dispirited and confused, he searches out one after another of his old friends who are still in Beijing. Finally he leaves his wild long hair, the symbol of his life in the city, at a roadside barber stand as his offering to Beijing.

5.9

Cry Me a River

An ancestral city; through its delicious botanical garden and its branched canals, we observe the clues and traces of its ancient culture. Two couples of men and women, former lovers, meet again one year later. The yesterday's breath of youth is still perceptible in their conversations. Is it still possible for us to love? Does youth really have an end? Like the networks linking the old city, what type of ecological existence does their culture require?

5.5

Where Has Time Gone?

A short film omnibus featuring the work of five directors representing five countries involved in the 2017 BRICS summit, an annual international relations conference held between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The collection—taking the concept of time as a unifying theme—depicts the economic, political, and social alienations and contradictions that create, compound, and structure issues as wide-ranging as poverty, class stratification, and homeless; familial distress; spousal abuse; and natural disaster.

6.1

In Public

A fragmentary landscape for a little train station in a suburban area and a bus stop in a mining town. A lonely soldier in his heavy coat, a tired old man, a bubbly young lady, a punk, a woman waiting in the street... From all those different people in these unfamiliar places, we can feel the exhaustion of every life.