Grand Prize winner at the 2006 Venice Film Festival! In “Still Life” the blood and the sweat run directly into the Yangtze River, where they mingle with more than a few tears. The movie takes place amid the clatter and misery of the Three Gorges Dam, which cuts across the Yangtze in central China. The largest dam in the world, Three Gorges is a site of great cultural and political strife because of both environmental and humanitarian concerns. This may sound like a prescription for social cinema, but director Jia Zhang-ke’s interest lies in visual ideas and human behavior, not agendas.

Kristine Harris (PhD, Columbia University) is Associate Professor of Chinese History and Director of the Asian Studies Program at the State University of New York. In Spring 2007 she was Visiting Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. She has also taught at the New School for Social Research. Her research explores the social and political facets of film culture in China from the 1890’s to the present, with emphasis on the pre-1949 period. Her publications include The Metropolis in the Cinematic Imagination of Republican China and the City Symphony Film,” In Dushi wenhua zhong de xiandai zhongguo 都市文化中的现代中国 [Popular Culture of the Modern Metropolis] (Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2007) and “The Goddess: Fallen Woman of Shanghai,” in Chinese Films in Focus (BFI 2003, 2008). “