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Restored versions of Chinese language cinema classics Wong Kar-wai’s “Days of Being Wild” (1990) and Jia Zhangke’s first full-length feature “Pickpocket” (“Xiao Wu”) 1998) will lead the inaugural program of Hong Kong’s M+ Cinema, which will be opened to the public on June 8.

The opening program also features the Hong Kong premiere of one of the films from Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’s epic project series “Dau,” making the M+ Museum notable for not canceling Russian culture following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

The cinema, comprising three theaters with seating capacity of 180, 60, and 40 seats, is a core facility of the Moving Image Centre at M+, the visual culture museum that opened in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District in November last year. Moving images, including artist-made audio-visual works, artist films, and traditional feature films, are considered among one of the three key disciplines of the mega institution...

Next month’s Criterion Channel selection is here, and as 2021 winds down further cements their status as our single greatest streaming service. Off the top I took note of their eight-film Jia Zhangke retro as well as the streaming premieres of Center Stage and Malni. And, yes, Margaret has been on HBO Max for a while, but we can hope Criterion Channel’s addition—as part of the 63(!)-film “New York Stories”—opens doors to a more deserving home-video treatment.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy, Bruno Dumont’s Joan of Arc duology, and Criterion’s editions of Irma Vep and Flowers of Shanghai also mark major inclusions—just a few years ago the thought of Hou’s masterpiece streaming in HD was absurd.

I could implore you not to sleep on The Hottest August and Point Blank and Variety and In the Cut or, look, so many Ernst Lubitsch movies,...

Tan Chui Mui is a Malaysian film director who has been actively working in Malaysian independent film industry. She’s one of the pioneers of Malaysian New Wave Cinema in the early 2000s. Her short films have won numerous prizes and awards in European festivals and her first feature film “Love Conquers All” won the New Currents Awards and Fipresci Award at the 11th Busan International Film Festival in 2006 and the Tiger Award from the 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her 2010 second feature film, “Year Without a Summer” was selected for the Asian Cinema Fund, receiving funding for both the script and post-production. She has been actively involved in the Malaysia independent film scene, working as a producer, editor, script writer, and occasionally an actress. In 2004, she set up Da Huang Pictures with Amir Muhammad, James Lee and Liew Seng Tat. In 2015, she inaugurated Young Filmmakers Workshop under Next New...

Chinese director Jia Zhangke has formally launched his new venture: a filmmaking school in his native Shanxi staffed by some of China’s top industry talent, including helmers Ning Hao and Bi Gan.

Communist party officials presided over an inauguration ceremony for the Shanxi Film Academy that was attended by major firms seeking synergies between the school’s future graduates and their own thirst for new talent and content. The school is affiliated with the existing Communication University of Shanxi, which trains many graduates to enter top media regulatory bodies like the State Administration of Radio and Television.

Official support for the new academy was repeatedly highlighted in both speeches and news coverage of the event. Little can be achieved in China at scale without strong government buy-in.

“The comprehensive thinking and strategic arrangements of the Shanxi Province Party Committee and government for the economic transformation of Shanxi has inspired us,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

30 Years of The Film Foundation

Equally impressive as his towering career is Martin Scorsese’s dedication to restoring previously lost classics and championing underseen gems with The Film Foundation. Now celebrating 30 years, they’ve been given the spotlight on The Criterion Channel, featuring a wealth of highlights as well as a conversation between Scorsese and Ari Aster. The lineup of essentials includes The Broken Butterfly (1919), Trouble in Paradise (1932), It Happened One Night (1934), L’Atalante (1934), The Long Voyage Home (1940) The Chase (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), The River (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Bigamist (1953), Ugetsu (1953), Senso (1954), The Big Country (1958), Shadows (1959), The Cloud-Capped Star (1960), Primary (1960), The Connection (1961), Salvatore Giuliano (1962), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Once Upon a Time in the West...

The New York Film Festival is rolling out a “reshaped” version of its Revivals section for this year’s edition of the festival, with a rich assortment of repertory cinema that runs the gamut from beloved classics to rarities seeking new life. The lineup includes a Tony Leung double bill, thanks to Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Flowers of Shanghai” and Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” while Joyce Chopra’s 1986 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, “Smooth Talk,” shows off a breakout performance by a young Laura Dern.

Other highlights include Jia Zhangke’s rarely screened “Xiao Wu,” Mohammad Reza Aslani’s rediscovered “The Chess Game of the Wind,” and Béla Tarr’s black-and-white noir, “Damnation.” Opening night filmmaker Steve McQueen also had a hand in the selection: he’s opted to screen Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct,” which he says inspired his latest project, a five-film anthology series,...

Jia Zhangke, one of China’s most acclaimed directors, is at the Berlin Film Festival for the world premiere of his first new documentary in a decade, “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue,” which is screening in the Berlinale Special section.

Featuring personal recollections of three of China’s most acclaimed writers, the film is the third part of a trilogy about the arts in China, following the 2005’s “Dong,” about Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong, and 2006’s “Useless,” about fashion designer Ma Ke.

Jia’s last documentary was 2011’s “I Wish I Knew,” which screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. His feature films, meanwhile, have always expressed an interest in a documentary-like realist style.

“I feel I’ve always been trying to knock down the barrier between documentary and fiction,” he told Variety.

“The most important thing about documentaries is that they help people understand and remember what we’ve lived through.

This article was produced as part of the Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring journalists at the Locarno Film Festival, a collaboration between the Locarno Film Festival, IndieWire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center with the support of Film Comment and the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists.

While Ken Loach’s “I, Daniel Blake” was surprisingly awarded the Palme d’Or this May, many critics slammed the film (and Cannes judges) for its blunt portrayal of the disenfranchised worker. Few audiences dig being preached at, and Loach’s politics were seen to trump its storytelling. Regardless of how mawkish one may find Loach’s alleged swan song, his concern for a 59-year-old ex-carpenter from Newcastle battling to stay on welfare connected with the George Miller-led jury, highlighting the resonance of Loach’s timely social critique.

It should be no surprise then that the jobless were frequent fixtures at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival,...

The entwined subjects of time passing and landscapes changing have always been synonymous with the work of Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke; his latest feature, Mountains May Depart, expands these ideas to a point that exists beyond any previously established horizon. The film may well be Jia’s most ambitious to date, in this respect: it spans three decades in all, touching down in 1999, 2014 and 2025, so essentially covering our past, present and future. As with all of Jia’s work, location here plays an integral role – like Platform and Pick Pocket, the narrative revolves around the director’s hometown of Fenyang – with scenes unfolding among local festivities on packed streets, or upon the scorched earth of a local coal mine that recalls similar shots in Barbara Loden’s Wanda. And just as we witnessed the gradual construction of the Yangtze River’s Three Gorges Dam (and inevitable destruction of the...

Mountains May Depart

Director: Jia Zhangke // Writer: Jia Zhangke

A preeminent figure in the Sixth Generation movement of Chinese cinema, Jia Zhangke is arguably one of the most renowned auteurs working in cinema today. Famously independently producing his early works, such as Pick Pocket (1997), Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures (2002), which were considered underground films, Zhangke was given unprecedented approval for his 2004 film The World (2004), which found the director’s domestic and international renown expand, leading to one of his most celebrated titles, 2006′s Still Life, which took home the Golden Lion at Venice. His next film, 2008′s 24 City was less well received, and Zhangke focused on documentary projects (including the 2010 title I Wish I Knew which premiered at Cannes in Un Certain Regard). Zhangke saw his most notable acclaim yet with 2013′s A Touch of Sin, which took home Best Screenplay at Cannes, depicting four tales of violence ripped from modern day headlines.

A Touch of Sin

Written and directed by Jia Zhangke

China, 2013

Jia Zhangke’s opening scene for A Touch of Sin acts as a device for reintroduction. We have previously seen the sixth generation Chinese auteur craft with slow-paced sensibility and political tinge to win over audiences with Unknown Pleasures (2002), The World (2004), and Still Life (2006). The aesthete continues to creep alongside Jia’s work as his camera quietly pursues a man on a motorcycle, donning a Chicago Bulls skullcap and weighty cargo jacket, manufactured black but padded with a layer of dust. His journey is halted by three axe-wielding thugs demanding that he pay them before continuing. In another work by Jia, the man would have obliged in a symbolic gesture referencing the petty thievery involved in China’s newfound capitalistic empire. The symbolic gestures remain, but this man won’t easily oblige. Instead, he instinctively draws his pistol and fires,...