Films On Small Town And Personal Historical Memories

Presently in the industry of the films about modern cities take advantage over other traditional subjects. However, Zhangke Jia targets the subjects about the small towns in the mainland of China in the process of modernization, keeping record of changes occurring in these particular places by means of technological practice. With Jia's enormous effort for over ten years, the films he directs are characterized by unique subjects and styles in beauty, and thus forming a specific system of pieces of film concerning the small towns.Owing to his own unique experiences, Zhangke Jia focuses on films about the small towns located between modern big cities and the innumerous rural areas. In some sense, he shows the real life about the small towns on screen, which was nearly ignored for long, enriching the subjects of films, creating more room for improvement, and taking on variety and complication of the realities.Zhangke Jia constructs the screen by means of film elements such as sound and color, describing in depth their natural scenery and cultural scenery as well. Compared with colorful urban scenery and fashionable urban culture, the small towns also take a particular position owing to the fact that they enjoy special traditional culture and locate far away from modern cities in the distance.As the society is changing all the time, the small towns are undergoing great changes. Director Jia witnesses the historic changes of the small towns in the course from traditional society to modern society in his films, using the means of personal historical memories. In addition, in the small towns there live the owners in this inter-course society, whose living conditions and mental puzzles can be lively under earthed. And Jia's films have a second thought of China's reality in a unique way.This thesis adopts such a method as internal text analyses mainly and external research in the aspects of society and history, even a combination of them, On this basis, I make a probe into values of Jia's films.