http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2013_global_thinkers/public/zhangke
Jia Zhangke is angry. He's angry that his fellow Chinese
filmmakers often ignore their country's worsening social problems,
including rising inequality and corruption. So he made a very different
kind of movie, one that exposes the roots of the ills he sees plaguing
China and the "hidden, disturbed emotions," as he told the Guardian, that are increasingly bubbling to the surface of everyday life.
Jia's movie, A Touch of Sin 《天注定》, is unblinkingly violent. Inspired by news headlines, it portrays a country consumed by its demons: A worker at the iPhone supplier Foxconn commits suicide. A coal miner murders a government official and a mine owner who have cheated local villagers. A businessman tries to coerce a receptionist at a massage parlor into having sex with him by beating her with wads of cash, and she stabs him to death.
New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis once called Jia a "modern master of postmodern discontent." A Touch of Sin, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival in April to rave reviews, is arguably Jia's darkest work yet, as well as his most political. "[In China,] people feel if you talk about sad or tragic things it will have even more of a negative impact on society," Jia told the Guardian. "It's really strange logic. If you can't even face it in a film, how can you face it in reality?"
Jia Zhangke
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2013_global_thinkers/public/zhangke
For using art to show how inequality breeds violence
Jia's movie, A Touch of Sin 《天注定》, is unblinkingly violent. Inspired by news headlines, it portrays a country consumed by its demons: A worker at the iPhone supplier Foxconn commits suicide. A coal miner murders a government official and a mine owner who have cheated local villagers. A businessman tries to coerce a receptionist at a massage parlor into having sex with him by beating her with wads of cash, and she stabs him to death.
New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis once called Jia a "modern master of postmodern discontent." A Touch of Sin, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival in April to rave reviews, is arguably Jia's darkest work yet, as well as his most political. "[In China,] people feel if you talk about sad or tragic things it will have even more of a negative impact on society," Jia told the Guardian. "It's really strange logic. If you can't even face it in a film, how can you face it in reality?"
photo credit: Larry Busacca/Getty Images
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