Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2008 • China
Starring Joan Chen, Lü Liping, Zhao Tao
Founded in 1958 to produce aviation engines, the once prosperous, now abandoned Chengdu Engine Group, known as Factory 420, awaits its destiny. Sold for millions to real estate developers, it will be transformed into an emblem of China’s new market economy: a complex of luxury apartment blocks called 24 City. Constructed around eight dramatic interviews, punctuated by snippets of pop songs and poetry, along with beautifully shot footage of the demolition, 24 CITY attempts to understand the complexity of the social changes sweeping across China by exploring both the factory’s physical destruction and its powerful symbolic echo of a half century of Communist rule.
Up Next in Directed by Jia Zhangke
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Still Life
Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2006 • China
Starring Zhao Tao, Han Sanming, Wang HongweiJia Zhangke employs an eloquent hybrid of documentary and fiction to tell the story of those left behind by a rapidly transforming Chinese society. Great changes have come to the town of Fengjie due to the constr...
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Xiao Wu
Directed by Jia Zhangke • 1997 • China, Hong Kong
Starring Wang Hongwei, Hao Hongjian, Zuo BaitaoThe feature debut of visionary director Jia Zhangke announced the arrival of arguably the most important Chinese filmmaker of his generation. Left behind by friends who have taken advantage of the c...
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Platform
Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2000 • China
Starring Wang Hongwei, Zhao Tao, Liang JingdongOne of the first masterpieces of twenty-first century cinema, Jia Zhangke’s sophomore feature is an at once epic and intimate vision of the changing China of the 1980s. Unfolding between 1979 and 1990, PLATFOR...
