70 minutes / Color
Mandarin / English subtitles
Release: 2012
Copyright: 2008
One of China's greatest living filmmakers, Jia Zhangke (Platform, The World), travels with acclaimed painter Liu Xiaodong from China to Thailand where they meet workers in the throes of social turmoil.
Liu Xiaodong is well-known for his monumental canvases, particularly those inspired by Chinas Three Gorges Dam project. In DONG, Jia Zhangke visits Liu on the banks of Fengjie, a city about to be swallowed up by the Yangtze River. The area is in the process of being de-constructed by armies of shirtless male workers who form the subject of Liu's paintings. Liu and Jia next travel to Bangkok, where Liu paints Thai sex workers languishing in brothels. The two sets of paintings are united in their subjects' shared sense of malaise in the face of the dehumanizing labor afforded them.
Jia takes Liu's work as a point of inspiration for his own cinematic innovation. Produced as a companion piece to Still Life (Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival), DONG stands on its own as an aesthetically provocative exploration of the documentary form. Blessed with the director's signature compositional beauty and humanism, Jia's vision of China is concrete and explosive (Jean-Pierre Rehm, Cahiers du Cinema).
"DONG exemplifies the cinematic mastery that has earned Jia the distinction of being "the planet's most excitingly original filmmaker." —Scott Foundas, LA Weekly
"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Highlights the humanity of the subjects. [Viewers may be motivated] to explore more about the director, the painter, and the bitter and sweet economic transition in present day China and beyond." —Hong Chen, LaGuardia Community College, in Educational Media Reviews Online
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Performance artist Li Ning turns his life into art in this epic work of experimental documentary.
LI Ning | 2012 | 168 minutes | Color | English; Mandarin | English subtitles
