Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Sanxia haoren / Still Life

Hiljaiseloa / Stilla liv / [literally: Good People of the Three Gorges]. CN 2006. PC: Shanghai Film Group, Xstream Pictures. P: Wang Tianyan, Xu Pengle, Zhu Jiong. EX: Zhang Dong, Chow Keung. D: Jia Zhang-ke. DP: Yu Li wei – HD digital. AD: Jing Dong Liang, Liu Qiang. M: Lim Giong. S: Zhang Yang. ED: Kong Jing Lei. Cast: Han Sanming (Sanming), Zhao Tao (Shen Hong), Ma Lizhen (Missy Ma), Li Zhibin (Guo Bing), Ma Xiang, Wang Hongwei (Wang Dongming), Luo Mingwang, Chen Kai, Chen Ronghu, Lin Zhou. 108 min. A NonStop 35 mm print with Swedish subtitles by Roger Ericsson and e-subtitles in Finnish by Otto Pietinen. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Jia Zhang-ke, Helsinki Festival), 23 Aug 2011.

Sampled Jia Zhang-ke's vision of the immense ecological change in China, as experienced at the ancient Chinese cultural landscape by the Three Gorges at the Yangtse (Chang Jiang) River. Sanming visits the old town in search of his wife and daughter whom he hasn't seen in 16 years and discovers that the whole neighbourhood of his youth has been flooded because of the Three Gorges Dam. I am impressed by the assured intensity of the rhythm which follows the duration of real life. Although I'm disappointed by the fact that the cinematography is high definition digital, I must admit that the images have been designed so that the visual quality is surprisingly good.

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