Visions du Réel announced January 18 that the Guest of Honour for its 55th edition (12-21 April) will be Chinese filmmaker, Jia Zhang-Ke. A leading figure in independent Chinese cinema, and contemporary cinema more broadly, Jia Zhang-Ke will present a masterclass exploring his “captivating and multifaceted oeuvre” which examines the history of his country and the characters who inhabit it.
A retrospective of his films will run throughout the festival. The tribute is presented in collaboration with the Cinémathèque suisse and ECAL (University of Art and Design in Lausanne).
Comments Jia Zhang-Ke: “Since the outbreak of Covid-19, I haven’t left China for almost four years. The 55th Visions du Réel will be my first trip to Europe after these four years. I feel like embracing the world again, as excited as a child about to go on a long trip for the first time. I am heading to Nyon, for cinema that reveals the world as it really is.”
Born in 1970 in the mining region of Shanxi, bordered by the Great Wall of China, Jia Zhang-Ke is a leading light in contemporary cinema, the festival underlines.
“He belongs to a generation of Chinese filmmakers who were profoundly affected by the Tiananmen Square protests. His diverse filmography, which comprises more than 20 short and feature works, borrows elements from both genre and non-fiction cinema. Switching from taught thrillers to documentaries and encompassing a myriad hybrid formats woven together by non-professional actors, fictional works on a canvas of reality, and fantasies bypassing otherwise restrained stories, Jia Zhang-Ke has spent two decades creating a filmography as coherent as it is shifting,” the festival adds.
“His stylistically diverse oeuvre deploys the full range of cinematographic techniques (16 and 35mm, DV, HD, etc.). Approaching his subject as a visual artist, Jia Zhang-Ke offers a subtle and subversive immersion in Chinese society, imbued with a sublimated realism. Resisting censorship and tirelessly defending the cultural significance of his country’s cinematic output, Jia Zhang-Ke weaves long-form, epic-style stories to explore personal and multifaceted journeys that challenge the notion of dissolution of the individual within the national narrative,” the festival continues.
“Ever willing to wrestle with the realities of China’s recent history, the filmmaker offers a profoundly humanist representation that draws on memories and recollections. To achieve this, Jia Zhang-Ke creates a narrative polysemy that focuses its gaze on the everyday lives of ordinary people living in ‘intermediate towns’ scattered between the rural life and that of the country’s burgeoning megacities.”
“By doing so, Jia Zhang-Ke’s films dissect the promises and mirages offered under the forced march of modernisation in effect since the 1960s. They examine the effects of this collective story, specifically the imposition of state capitalism on human beings, by providing a romantic and sensitive counter-narrative. An essential and uncompromising filmography that has often fallen foul of the government’s strict censorship regime.”
The 55th edition of Visions du Réel runs 12-21 April 2024.
