24 City, Jia Zhan gke (China, 2008): Documentary Voices

The Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Berkeley will screen 24 City.

(Er shi si cheng ji). Jia Zhangke’s exquisite documentary-fiction hybrid examines a Chinese factory city being dismantled to make way for luxury apartment houses. For Jia, “history is always a blend of fact and imagination.” Its workers narrate how the city’s walls have come to embody China’s modern history. Fictionalized monologues, based on workers’ experiences but delivered by actors, are interwoven with real-life testimonies charting the factory’s activities from the Korean War to the present day. What emerges is an elegy to a bygone city whose physical structures may be erased by the march of capitalist development, but whose memories live on. Chi-hui Yang, San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

Written by Jia, Zhai Yongming. Photographed by Yu Lik Wai, Wang Yu. With Joan Chen, Lu Liping, Zhao Tao, Chen Jianbin. (107 mins, In Mandarin with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Cinema Guild)

Tickets: $5.50 BAM/PFA members UC Berkeley students,  $9.50 adults (18-64),  $6.50 UC Berkeley faculty and staff, non-UC Berkeley students, senior citizens (65 & over), disabled persons, and youth (17 & under)