“Sorry… You forget that this is New York, not Beijing,” laughed Jia Zhang-Ke, a titan of the “Sixth Generation” of directors of post-1990 Chinese cinema, to a packed house inside the Alice Tully Hall for the New York Film Festival on Tuesday. .
In a Q&A after the American premiere of his latest film, Caught by the tidesJia's English translator could barely keep up as he spoke excitedly about the 23-year journey to bring his new project to the big screen. While many in the audience understood Mandarin, the director's native language, his translator transcribed as quickly as possible for English speakers. One thing that needed no translation was Jia's passion for providing a worldview on contemporary China through a cinematic lens.
Caught by the tides follows Qiaoqiao (played by Zhao Tao, the director's real-life wife and muse), a lovelorn singer who traverses miles across her northern province amid China's political and economic changes and the COVID-19 outbreak. A decades-long depression slowly consumes her as she realizes that her boyfriend's pursuit of a better life didn't include her. (The Hollywood journalistDavid Rooney says of Zhao: “Her face is one of the most strikingly expressive in modern cinema, and her long collaboration with her husband Jia is among the greatest unions of actress and director on the screen.”) In the End, Which Is Set in After the Pandemic, Qiaoqiao makes a choice that secures her future.
For Jia, giving Qiaoqiao a strong sense of self after years of living ambiguously was crucial to culling “mountains of footage” from his two cinematographers, Yu Lik-wai and Eric Gautier, who shot interchangeably between 2001 and 2023. Caught by the tides is composed almost entirely of improvised footage that Jia shot across China with his crew of longtime collaborators over the past two decades.
“Through constantly going back and forth trying to understand [Qiaoqiao] out, I suddenly realized that this is just a strong female character who doesn't care whether or not she has a family or is married,” Jia explained through a translator. “This is a character who, in the end, she suddenly realizes that she'll be fine on her own, she'll be herself, and somehow she won't feel like she can't live without love, without family, without marriage.” And without missing a beat, the director added to the audience in perfect English, without “a man”.
Another cinematic element is Jia, who won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 for his film Still life – ensured that contemporary China was captured correctly. “When I was looking back at the footage from the last twenty-something years, and [I was] also thinking about what will happen to these two characters in 2020, especially in a unique moment. Collectively, as a country, people are going through a kind of slant, a kind of loneliness, a kind of loneliness,” he said. “Thinking back to the footage, Qiaoqiao [having] I went through hell in the name of love, I thought I had to do something here and now, for the contemporary part, to really dictate what happened to this particular character.”
Jia continued: “After all the trauma and damage that was done to her, I thought about the fact that if I could place her in a supermarket – which is a very public-facing space, full of merchandise and a space where you have the stark contrast with the loneliness he feels. [Also I needed to] incorporate this robot friend; it's very interesting when viewers watch my film during some festival screenings, they feel that it's a science fiction film because of the existence of those robots. But without knowing that robots are currently seen everywhere in China. They are ubiquitous and you can see them in hotels, restaurants, offices.”
“For me it's really about thinking about how we can on the one hand capture the essence of this political character and, at the same time, bring the contemporary zeitgeist to China,” he explained. “It's almost like you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future. Through the use of robots, I use film to step into the future as the country evolves.”
Before a celebratory post-screening dinner with NYFF guests, journalists and Rolex executives at Kwame Onwuachi's Tatiana restaurant in New York, Jia spoke with The Hollywood journalist on returning to the festival, which has presented 10 of his films over the past 24 years. “I'm very happy, very pleased,” and with a laugh, “I like to see her in the bigger theater.” Whether he was referring to his wife or his giant-screen Alice Tully Hall project remains up for interpretation.
The NYFF event was organized in collaboration with Rolex; Jia, along with fellow directors Martin Scorsese and James Cameron, is a Rolex Testimonee, as the brand maintains close ties to the world of cinema and has a partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which serves as a sponsor of the Oscars) . . Jia also collaborated with young Filipino director Rafael Manuel as part of the Rolex Mentoring Program.