(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)
(In conjunction with) Documentary Voices is presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course History of Documentary Film, taught by Jeffrey Skoller during the spring semester. The series begins with a screening of PFA’s recent preservation of the legendary cinema verité-style fiction film David Holzman’s Diary. We also present three programs of animated documentaries: The Green Wave, which uses animation and a range of new technologies to document the 2009 Iranian "Green Revolution"; Kongo, which combines animation and historical footage to trace the history of Congo; and a program of documentary animation shorts. These latter works commemorate the publication of Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, guest edited by Jeffrey Skoller, who will introduce two of the programs. The special issue Making it (Un)real: Contemporary Theories and Practices in Documentary Animation features essays and reflections by a range of contemporary scholars and filmmakers on, in Skoller’s words, “this hybrid form that mixes fact and fiction, analysis and speculation, and the high seriousness of documentary nonfiction with the playfulness of animation.” It features articles by Karen Beckman, Steve Fore, Annabelle Honness-Roe, Laura U. Marks, and Tess Takahashi and artworks by filmmakers including Lewis Klahr, Abraham Ravett, and Jacqueline Goss. This series continues in March and April with more programs that explore new directions in documentary film.
Theater Admission Prices
Single Feature
$5.50 BAM/PFA Members, UC Berkeley Students
$9.50 Adults (18-64)
$6.50 UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and retirees
Non-UC Berkeley students
Senior citizens (65 & over)
Disabled persons
Youth (17 & under
Additional Feature $4.00 All Patrons
PFA General:
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 92027
(510) 642-1412
