I Wish I Knew

Devised for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, I Wish I Knew displeased the organisers, who refused to screen it inside the Chinese pavilion. Indeed, Jia Zhang-Ke has no taste for panegyrics. His film is a dizzying plunge into a century of Chinese history, written in letters of blood. Not the official account, known to have been manipulated and truncated by the regime in power since 1949, but its protean and dynamic counter-narrative, told by its more or less direct witnesses. Between his shots of contemporary Shanghai, through which the fictional character of Zhao Tao meditatively drifts, the filmmaker collects the testimonies of 18 revolutionaries, artists and figures such as the daughter of the "boss" of a powerful 1930s Triad. All of them have links with this maritime city, a place conducive to both exile and return due to events often banished from the collective memory. In his film, Jia Zhang-Ke resorts to another form of testimony: that of cinema. Excerpts from propaganda films, as well as from films by Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Lou Ye, lend a mythical aura to the events of the past.
Emmanuel Chicon

Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, 2020
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