NYFF Main Slate 24 City Afterschool Ashes of Time Redux Bullet in the Head Changeling Che Chouga A Christmas Tale The Class Four Nights with Anna Gomorrah Happy-Go-Lucky The Headless Woman Hunger I’m Gonna Explode Let It Rain Lola Montès Night and Day The Northern Land Serbis Summer Hours Tokyo Sonata Tony Manero Tulpan Waltz with Bashir Wendy and Lucy The Windmill Movie The Wrestler Special Events HBO Films Dialogues Avant-Garde Oshima Rappaport Exhibit Ticket Information Location Information Snapshots Clips/Trailers Poster Submissions About Archive

24 City / Er shi si cheng ji Series: 46th New York Film Festival [Sept. 26 – Oct. 12, 2008] Director: Jia Zhangke, Country: China/Hong Kong/Japan, Release: 2008, Runtime: 112 The dean of Chinese independent cinema, Jia Zhangke is a poet of facts. Jia’s latest bulletin on the state of the world’s most rapidly expanding economy is more obviously documentary than the director’s previous fiction films — or perhaps more obviously fictional than his documentaries. 24 City takes as its subject a gigantic Chengdu munitions plant slated for conversion into high-rise luxury apartments. A half-dozen retired workers, brought from all over China to labor in the massive factory, play themselves as the (barely) living monuments of Mao’s China, their stories supplemented by monologues delivered by several professional actors, including Joan Chen. Jia’s framing is, as always, impeccable. His oral history of post-revolutionary China (and subversively old-fashioned hymn to industrial production) is artfully composed, rich in offbeat details and punctuated with pop songs, including the Internationale. An ambivalent exercise in Communist nostalgia as well as a moving collective portrait. A Cinema Guild release. Jia Zhangke b. 1970, Fenyang, Shanxi, China 2008 Cry Me a River (short) NYFF 2007 Useless NYFF 2006 Dong 2006 Still Life 2004 The World NYFF 2002 Unknown Pleasures 2000 Platform NYFF 1997 Pickpocket (Xiao wu) ND/NF 1995 Xiaoshan huijia

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