Documenting Postsocialist Reality: The Films of Jia Zhangke.

摘要

In this paper, I will examine how the films of Jia Zhangke operate as social analyses of the contemporary condition in China through both subject matter and the documentation of a society in transition, as well as, through the creation of an innovative film language. Jia employs cinematic techniques that problematize the borders between fiction and documentary, subjectivity and objectivity, and realism and surrealism thus challenging the underlying assumptions that shape film as a medium itself. It is this essential filmic gesture which blurs the boundaries between traditional cinematic categories that makes Jia's films unique in their ability to reveal the inherent contradictions that structure the postsocialist condition in contemporary China.