Original Title: 一直游到海水变蓝
Director: Jia Zhang Ke
Runtime: 112 mins
Country: China
Language: Mandarin with English Subtitles
Rating: PG

Synopsis

Set during an annual literary festival in Jia Zhangke’s provincial hometown in Shanxi, Jia interviews three acclaimed novelists, Jia Pingwu, Yu Hua, and Liang Hong. They recall the dire circumstances in their home villages, challenges to agricultural development, and the impact of the Cultural Revolution amongst other personal anecdotes.

The title is drawn from the film’s penultimate scene: Yu Hua reminisces on his childhood, when “the sea was yellow, but the textbooks said it was blue”, and expresses his wish to “swim out till the sea turns blue.” Interspersing personal oral histories and poetic reveries of the authors, Jia illuminates the proximity of fiction and documentary, a motif persistent throughout his own oeuvre. By tracing an intimate portrait of the authors’ lives, Jia maps the fraught spiritual histories and pervasive sense of nostalgia experienced by the physically and culturally displaced.

This screening is part of the programme 6 Films by Jia Zhang Ke. For more screenings, please click here. 

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