Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue

The camera pans slowly over a statuary glorifying revolutionaries, before filming the men and women who now remain of that population, faces whose lines recall the hunger they endured during the Maoist era - such as Ma Feng, a famous writer from the same province as Jia Zhang-Ke. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue concludes a documentary trilogy on Chinese artists, focusing on a quartet of authors from different generations. He talks to Jia Pingwa, the son of counter-revolutionaries who has become a leading figure in Chinese popular literature; Yu Hua, more interested in urban-rural areas in transition; and finally, Liang Hong, the youngest, who described the effects of socio-political change on her home village. Divided into 18 chapters, some in the form of single shots magnifying everyday rural rituals, others built around long interviews, the film meanders through a large part of modern China's cultural history, charged with a kind of bittersweet nostalgia for the director’s native Shanxi.
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