Thirty-six-year-old Chinese director Jia Zhangke was the surprise
winner of the top honor for best feature film at the 63rd Venice
Film Festival in early September. He's the second Chinese mainland
director to win this major film award after Zhang Yimou.
Jia Zhangke brought his film Still Life to the Peking
University Hall last night and showed his sparkling Golden Lion
sculpture for the first time to the Chinese audience.
That is one of the scenes in film Still Life, known in
Chinese as San Xia Hao Ren, or The Good People of the
Three Gorges.
The film tells the love stories of two separated couples who
meet again in the village. A miner comes back to the village to
look for his wife. They finally reunite as another nurse returns
for her husband, but they choose to part. Nonetheless, the four all
learn the essence of true love. The movie is a documentary-style
film shot in a village in the Yangtze River town of Fengjie, which
was destroyed by the building of China's Three Gorges Dam.
A Beijing brief preview was held on Monday night, which
attracted many students from Peking University and other college
students and residents nearby. All the 2,400 tickets were sold out
before the film opened. Some students even hung slogans to show
their support.
The art film can be divided into four episodes: the cigarette,
wine, tea and toffee. The director explains.
"The basic needs to maintain a happy life are very simple:
cigarettes, wine, tea and toffee. The farmers and workers who live
in the remote villages can live for year on cigarettes, wine, tea
and toffee. They will feel a sense of happiness."
Still Life beautifully captures the town and the lives
and relationships of those living within it. Even in the face of
deconstruction, these people still try to pursue beautiful loves
and lives. Although they live ordinary lives, the characters in
"Still Life" take on a more active attitude in pursuing what they
want.
Jia Zhangke gave a brief but moving speech about shooting the
film at the preview last night. He talked about how the idea came
to him and why he decided to reveal the natural lives of the
village people from the special eyes of a people from Shanxi
province. When explained why he chose his brother Han Sanming to be
the lead actor, Jia Zhangke was so moved, he wept twice on the
spot.
Regarding why he choose the same time period to compete at the
new year box office with commercial blockbusters such as Curse
of the Golden Flower, Jia Zhangke said, "There should not be
only one kind of film in our cinemas. The two different genres of
movies cannot be compared with each other, so they might not
compete for the box office."
From December 7 to 14, the film will travel to 10 major Chinese
cities, including Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing, for previews
before it premieres across the country on?December 14 in
Guangzhou.
Jia Zhangke was born into an ordinary family in a county in
Shanxi province. He is a moving force behind Chinese film's
so-called Sixth Generation. Jia Zhangke gained wide international
acclaim after his first full-length movie.
(CRI December 5, 2006)
