Ash is Purest White

Week Commencing 26th April    Also available on   Curzon Home Cinema and BFI Player

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Born in 1970 (Fengyang, Shanxi Province), Jia Zhang-ke studied painting, developed an interest in fiction, and in 1995 founded the Youth Experimental Film Group, for which he directed two award-winning videos.

He graduated in 1997 from the Beijing Film Academy, and has since directed many short, documentary and feature-length films. His first feature, Xiao Wu (1998) was selected at at the Berlin Film Festival. The following films Zhantai (Platform, 2000), and Ren xiao yao (Unknown Pleasures, 2002) were selected in competition respectively at Venice and Cannes. He established Xstream Pictures in 2003 in order to promote young talented directors from all over China. Sanxia haoren (Still Life) received the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival 2006. Since he has made Er Shi Si Cheng Ji (24 City, 2008, distributed by New Wave Films), Hai shang chuan qi (I Wish I Knew, 2010), Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Best Screenplay, Cannes 2013).

Filmography

"A deeply moving gangster love story… You are pulled in almost immediately by the beauty of the characterizations, the specificity of the milieu and the depth of feeling that courses beneath every exchange."

"Exquisite and ferocious...Beautiful, expansive and deeply melancholy drama...A sublime romantic tragedy."

Justin Chang, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Zhao Tao is Jia’s Joan Crawford, or his Gloria Grahame… whatever narratives ellipses Jia throws at her, Zhao Tao’s Qiao endures—through many reversals of fortune and changes of wardrobe."

Jonathan Romney, FILM COMMENT

"Jia Zhangke explores the masculine codes of his country and his own previous work in this ravishing, self-referential film about a woman in love with a mobster, with an astonishing lead performance from Zhao Tao."

"One of the most accomplished oeuvres in contemporary cinema."

"Magisterial film"


Giovanni Marchini Camia, SIGHT & SOUND

★★★★

"Jia Zhang-ke’s latest is an often glorious drama"

"Jia is very much an industry unto himself. Perhaps his only contemporary is Zhao Tao, who first appeared in Jia’s 2000 film Platform and has been the most consistent human presence in his cinema since. Here, together, they display an astonishing level of artistic symbiosis, years of creative loyalty all channeled into a portrait of devotion betrayed, unrewarded, but nevertheless unbowed. When everyone else mouths off about the values of the jianghu code, Qiao listens, and takes them to heart. This is her delusional undoing, her tragedy, and, finally, her glory.”

Nick Pinkerton, ARTFORUM

★★★★

"Few film-makers are as observant or as poetic as Jia is about the passing of time..."

"…this sprawling epic is undeniably a gangster movie, but it is also something stranger and sadder, a haunting, transcendent and often downright weird meditation on transience, loyalty and the soul of modern China."

Nicholas Barber, BBC.COM

"Do not be gulled by the slow pace of Jia's stories; they are ceaselessly alive to his country's haste, as it rushes to erase and to construct, and his sympathies tilt to those uncertain souls who simply can't keep up."

Anthony Lane, THE NEW YORKER

★★★★

"The movie represents both the director and his lead actress at the peak of their powers."

Glenn Kenny, ROGEREBERT.COM

"There's a timeless quality to Qiao and Bin's relationship, to its elemental cycles of loyalty, power, and humiliation."

Bilge Ebiri, VILLAGE VOICE

"...subtly majestic drama”

Daniel Kasman, MUBI NOTEBOOK

For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.