WATCH PARTY: Ash is Purest White (2018) dir. Jia Zhangke @ Mary Pretlow Library
Details
We'll be in the large room, Meeting Room 1, to the right of the entrance.
I haven't seen Jia Zhangke's newest movie, Caught by the Tides, which has been getting rave reviews. I liked this one, though.
RUNTIME: 141 minutes
SYNOPSIS (from Film at Lincoln Center): Jia Zhangke’s extraordinary gangster melodrama begins by following Qiao (a never better Zhao Tao) and her mobster boyfriend Bin as they stake out their turf against rivals and upstarts in 2001 Datong before expanding out into an epic, three-part narrative of how abstract forces shape individual lives. As the formidable, quick-witted Qiao, Zhao Tao has fashioned a heroine for the ages.
BLURBS:
"Zhao Tao just gives this powerhouse performance. It's so understated and her work -- and the film as a whole -- really do accumulate in their emotional resonance." - Christy Lemire, LAist
"This is one of Zhangke's peak achievements: pure cinema, and a story of the underworld unlike anything you've seen before." - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"No one makes movies like Mr. Jia does. He's a dramatist with the eye of a documentarian and the instincts of a historian, even a geographer. But he's also a romantic poet, and his heroine... is driven by love as far as it can take her." - Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal