PLATFORM
Opens on February 28
Director: Jia Zhangke Run Time: 155 min. Release Year: 2001 Language: Chinese
Starring: Liang Jingdong, Tian Yi Yang, Wang Bo, Wang Hongwei, Zhao Tao
One of the first masterpieces of twenty-first century cinema, Jia Zhangke’s sophomore feature is an at once epic and intimate vision of the changing China of the 1980s. Unfolding between 1979 and 1990, PLATFORM centers around a provincial theater troupe who go from performing Maoist propaganda as the Fenyang Peasant Culture Group to playing western-influenced pop music as the All-Star Rock and Breakdance Electronic Band—along the way finding themselves increasingly adrift in a society suspended between tradition and modernization.