A people's director: Jia Zhangke's cinematic style
Date
2017-08-01
Authors
Luo, Yaxi
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Abstract
As a leading figure of “The Six Generation” directors, Jia Zhangke’s films focus on reality of contemporary Chinese society, and record the lives of people who were left behind after the country’s urbanization process. He depicts a lot of characters who struggle with their lives, and he works to explore one common question throughout all of his films: “where do I belong?” Jia Zhangke uses unique filmmaking techniques in order to emphasize the feelings of people losing their sense of home. In this thesis, I am going to analyze his cinematic style from three perspectives: photography, musical scores and metaphors. In each chapter, I will use one film as the main subject of discussion and reference other films to complement my analysis.
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Keywords
Jia Zhangke, the Sixth Generation, cinematic style, photography, handheld camera, music, aspect ratio, metaphor, intertextuality, recurring plot, long-take shots, Chinese independent film