Listen to this episode of Studio 360 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:
Get More Studio 360
Slate Plus members get extended, ad-free versions of our podcasts—and much more. Sign up today and try it free for two weeks.
Subscribe to Studio 360
Copy this link and add it in your podcast app.
For detailed instructions, see our Slate Plus podcasts page.
For much of his career, Jia Zhangke’s films were officially banned in his home country, China. But through austere, realist movies like Still Life, Platform, and The World, Jia became one of the most celebrated directors on the international art-house circuit.
His latest film, Ash Is Purest White, appears at first to be a conventional mob epic, focused on a “gangster’s moll” character played magnificently by Zhao Tao. But with a story beginning in 2001 and spanning 17 years, the movie is just as much about the effects of the rapid growth of China’s economy on its society. The dramatic changes led some working-class Chinese to form criminal brotherhoods for support.
“These are the people bound together because of the human connections among them,” says Jia. “They have their code of honors and code of behaviors, and the way that they connect with one another to somehow protect one another.”
Jia Zhangke joins Kurt Andersen for a conversation about Ash Is Purest White. And he shares some of the movies that have had the greatest impact on him, from Robert Bresson to Breakin’.
This podcast was produced by Studio 360’s Evan Chung.
Studio 360 plugs:
Please remember to like us on our Facebook page and Twitter. Send your emails to incoming@studio360.org.
