Still Life (2006 film)
| Still Life | |
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| Directed by | Jia Zhangke |
| Produced by |
Xu Pengle Wang Tianyun Zhu Jiong |
| Written by | Jia Zhangke Sun Jianming Guan Na |
| Starring |
Zhao Tao Han Sanming |
| Music by | Lim Giong |
| Cinematography | Yu Lik-wai |
| Edited by | Kong Jinglei |
| Distributed by | Xstream Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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108 minutes |
| Country | China |
| Language |
Standard Mandarin Jin Chinese Sichuanese |
Still Life (Chinese: 三峡好人; pinyin: Sānxiá hǎorén; literally: "Good people of the Three Gorges") is a 2006 Chinese film directed by Jia Zhangke. Shot in the old village of Fengjie, a small town on the Yangtze River which is slowly being destroyed by the building of the Three Gorges Dam, Still Life tells the story of two people in search of their spouses. Still Life is a co-production between the Shanghai Film Studio and Xstream Pictures.
The film premiered at the 2006 Venice Film Festival and was a winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film. The film premiered at a handful of other film festivals, and received a limited commercial release in the United States on January 18, 2008 in New York City.
Like The World, Jia Zhangke's previous film, Still Life was accepted by Chinese authorities and was shown uncensored in both mainland China and abroad.
Still Life is set in Fengjie, a city upstream of the massive Three Gorges Dam. Now marked for flooding, the city undergoes a process of self-deconstruction. Into this dying town comes Han Sanming, a coal-miner from the province of Shanxi who has returned in search of a wife who ran away sixteen years ago. Upon arriving, he asks a local motorcyclist to drive him to his former address on "Granite Street." The driver takes him to the river bank, revealing that his entire neighborhood has been flooded since the building of the dam. After a failed attempt to obtain his wife's information from the local municipal office, Han Sanming settles into a local hotel. Sanming's next stop is a rickety boat owned by his wife's elder brother. The brother informs Sanming that his wife and daughter (the real reason for his return) work downriver in Yichang but that if he remains in the city, they will eventually return there.
Sanming then befriends a local teen, Brother Mark, who helps him get a job with his demolition crew. Together, the two spend their days tearing down buildings.
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