The screening is part of a double bill with Still Life and will be introduced by Sabrina Yu (Chinese Independent Film Archive, CIFA).

Dong is the second chapter in Jia Zhangke's documentary trilogy about artists in China, alongside Useless (2007) and Swinning Out till the Sea Turns Blue (2020). Made in the same period as Still Life, it occupies a unique place in Jia Zhangke’s body of work, functioning both as a documentary in its own right and as a companion piece to his most internationally acclaimed fiction film. Centred on contemporary painter Liu Xiaodong - whose monumental canvases, inspired in part by China’s Three Gorges Dam project, resonate closely with Jia’s own cinematic concerns of marginal lives, transient spaces, and bodies shaped by labour and displacement.

Shot on digital video, Dong follows Liu as he travels first to the Three Gorges region, where the construction of the dam has displaced entire communities, and later to Bangkok, where he paints a group of young sex workers. Jia’s camera quietly observes Liu’s encounters with his subjects and surroundings, as well as the slow, physical act of painting itself.

Cast:
Liu Xiaodong, Han Sanming