Realisms within Conundrum
Abstract
With persistent efforts on constructing personal and collective memories arising from the unprecedented transformations in post-socialist China, Jia Zhangke has produced an ensemble of realist films with an impressive personal and authentic appeal. This paper examines how his films are characterised by a variety of accents, images of authenticity, a quotidian ambience, and a new sense of materiality within the local-global nexus. Within a tripartite model of truth, identity, and performance, Jia’s oeuvres demonstrate the powerful performativity of different modes of realism arising out of a state of conundrum when China undergoes a transition from planned economy into wholesale marketisation and globalisation.
References
Electronic reference
Esther M. K. Cheung, “Realisms within Conundrum”, China Perspectives [Online], 2010/1 | 2010, Online since 01 April 2013, connection on 29 April 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/5048; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.5048
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