In Public

Jia Zhang-Ke's first documentary was a 2001 commission from the Jeonju Festival in South Korea to produce a short film in digital format. The director chose the mining town of Datong (northern Shanxi), once the coal capital, whose factories are now beginning to close at the turning of the 21st century. He traveled all around the town for just over a month with a small crew, shooting improvisationally in five public spaces: a station, a bus stop, a coach, a railway carriage converted into a restaurant, and finally a makeshift dance hall created in the ruins of an industrial area. Nothing out of the ordinary happens in In Public, whose 31 shots are interwoven with moments of quiet, waiting and dreary entertainment. Yet the presence of the camera and the glances it provokes serve to create a force field, made up of as many potential stories as the characters appearing in the frame might embody. The whole film occupies that uncertain zone in which the potential energy of multiple fictions is triggered by the scenarios that reality offers.
Emmanuel Chicon

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Ash is Purest White, 2018
The Hedonists, 2016
Mountains May Depart, 2015
A Touch of Sin, 2013
Yulu, 2011
I Wish I Knew, 2010
Stories on Human Rights, 2008
Cry Me a River, 2008
24 City, 2008
Our Ten Years, 2007
Useless, 2007
Still Life, 2006
Dong, 2006
The World, 2004
Unknown Pleasures, 2002
The Condition of Dogs, 2001
In Public, 2001
Platform, 2000
Pickpocket, 1997
Du Du, 1996
Xiao Shan Going Home, 1995