The screening on 4 April will be introduced by Luke Robinson (University of Sussex).
A singular work in Jia Zhangke’s filmography, 24 City is a striking hybrid of documentary and fiction, tracing half a century of Chinese industrial history from 1958 to 2008 through intimate personal accounts.
Set around the transformation of Factory 420, a former state-owned industrial complex in Chengdu, into the luxury real-estate development known as '24 City', the film interweaves real interviews with scripted monologues performed by well-known actors, including Joan Chen. Through poetic quotations and first-person narratives, 24 City transforms collective memory into an intimate, lyrical meditation on labour, loss, and the passing of an era.
