DVD & Blu-ray: SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE (2020) - Documentary

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Product Description: From master director Jia Zhang-Ke (Ash Is Purest White, A Touch of Sin) comes a vital document of Chinese society since 1949. Jia interviews three prominent authors―Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, and Liang Hong―born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, respectively. In their stories, we hear of the dire circumstances they faced in their rural villages and small towns, and the substantial political effort undertaken to address it, from the social revolution of the 1950s through the unrest of the late 1980s. In their faces, we see full volumes left unsaid. Jia weaves it all together with his usual brilliance. SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE is an indispensable account of a changing China from one of the country's foremost cinematic storytellers.

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New on Blu-ray: STILL LIFE (2006) - Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival

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Product Description: Still Life, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2006, is an empathetic portrait of those left behind by a modernizing society and, as in director Jia Zhang-ke's earlier films (Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World), it is a unique hybrid of documentary and fiction. In Still Life, great changes have come to the town of Fengjie due to the construction of the Three Gorges hydro project: Countless families that had lived there for many generations have had to relocate to other cities. Fengjie's old town, which has a 2000-year history, has been torn down and submerged forever, but its new neighborhood hasn't been finished yet. There are still things that need to be salvaged and yet there are also things that must be left behind. In Still Life, such life-changing choices face both Sanming, a miner traveling to Fengjie in search of his ex-wife of sixteen years, and Shen Hong, a nurse who has come to Fengjie to look for her husband who she hasn't seen in two years. Both Sanming and Shen will find who they're looking for, but in the process they too will have to decide what is worth salvaging in their lives and what they need to let go of.

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DVD & Blu-ray: I WISH I KNEW (2010) - Documentary

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Product Description: Shanghai’s past and present flow together in Jia Zhangke’s (A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart) poetic and poignant I Wish I Knew, a portrait of this fast-changing port city. Restoring censored images and filling in forgotten facts, Jia provides an alternative version of 20th-century China’s fraught history as reflected through life in the Yangtze city. He builds his narrative through a series of eighteen interviews with people from all walks of life—politicians’ children, ex-soldiers, criminals, and artists (including the masterful Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien)—while returning regularly to the image of his favorite lead actress, Zhao Tao (Ash Is Purest White), wandering through the Shanghai World Expo Park. (The film was commissioned by the World Expo, but is anything but a piece of straightforward civic boosterism.) I Wish I Knew is a richly textured tapestry full of provocative juxtapositions. - Nick Pinkerton, Metrograph

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