Metrograph

Jia’s intimate epic begins in and returns to the director’s hometown of Fenyang, Shanxi Province, where it picks up with a theatre troupe first encountered in the late ’70s, following them through changes in fashion over the course of a decade as they are scattered to the wind and finally return, along the way tracking the social shifts that accompany China’s move from the wake of the Cultural Revolution to the threshold of market capitalism. “It’s Pop Art as history.” —J. Hoberman

35mm print courtesy of Curzon Film

Distributor: Janus Films