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| Still Life | 
 enlarge | Director: Jia Zhang Ke
Actors: Wang Hong Wei, Zhao Tao, Zhou Lin, Han Sanming, Li Zhubin
Studio: New Yorker Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $26.98
You Save: $2.97 (10%)
New (2) Used (1) from $24.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 5197
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), Mandarin Chinese (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 108
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
UPC: 717119111748
EAN: 0717119111748
ASIN: B001CD6GL6
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: November 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED!
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Product Description
In Still Life, great changes have come to the town of Fengjie due to the construction of the Three Gorges hydro project on the Yangtze River. Countless families that had lived there for many generations have had to relocate to other cities. Fengjie's old town, which has a 2000-year history, has been torn down and submerged forever. There are still things that need to be salvaged and yet there are also things that must be left behind. In Still Life, such life-changing choices face both Sanming, a miner traveling to Fengjie in search of his ex-wife of sixteen years, and Shen Hong, a nurse who has come to Fengjie to look for her husband who she hasn't seen in two years. Both Sanming and Shen will find who they're looking for, but in the process they too will have to decide what is worth salvaging in their lives and what they need to let go of. Still Life is an empathetic portrait of those left behind by a modernizing society and, as in director Jia Zhang-ke's earlier films (Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World), it is a unique hybrid of documentary and fiction. Special Features:
- Additional feature film, Dong (68 minutes)
- Interview with director Jia Zhang-ke
- Theatrical Trailer
- Scene Selections
- Dolby Digital 5.1
- Enhanced for 16x9 TVs
- Optional English subtitles "A BREATHTAKING collision of fact and fiction. A movie to change one's view of both cinema and life. As such, it's very, very dangerous." John Anderson, NEWSDAY "Extremely beautiful!" David Denby, THE NEW YORKER "Extraordinary!" Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
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| Customer Reviews:
Digging Up the Past, Burying the Present, Building the Future. December 2, 2008
"Still Life" was written and directed by Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke, who brings a documentarian's style to this fictional drama inspired by the upheaval that the incredible Three Gorges Dam project has created. Two people from the city of Shanxi travel south to what is left of Fengjie to look for people from their past. Ham Sanming (Han Sanming) is trying to find his ex-wife who took their young daughter and left him 16 years ago. Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) hasn't heard from her husband in 2 years and journeys to Fengjie, where he is a manager for the Demolition Authority, to confront him. Fengjie is a 2000-year-old town in the process of being demolished in 2 years, as it is gradually flooded with much of the Old City is already submerged.
"Still Life" is shot and scripted in a "cinema verite" style with a conspicuously slow, contemplative pace. It doesn't ever speed up, but it did eventually lull me into its languid universe. It is a mediation on people's relationship to the past and to life's forward motion. Sanming and Hong have come to Fengjie to either reclaim their past or to let it go. There is an archeological dig across the river, ironically digging up relics from thousands of years ago, as the town of Fengjie is demolished and buried, while the great Three Gorges Dam is constructed. Director Jia Zhang-Ke has delicately highlighted the strange cultural and social implications of China's massive infrastructure project, where past, present, and future meet head-on. It is clear which is winning, but which should win is less certain. In Mandarin with optional English subtitles.
The DVD (New Yorker Films 2008): The documentary "Dong" (1 hour, 10 min) is included on the disc. This is a loosely structured film about the artist Liu Xiaodong which first introduced Jia Zhang-Ke to the Three Gorges region. There is an "Interview with Jia Zhang-Ke" (18 min) in which he speaks about the film's structure, themes, his documentary approach, visual style, and the Sixth Generation emphasis on the personal and individual. There is also a theatrical trailer (2 min) and a Press Kit and interview with the director in DVD-ROM form, which can be accessed on a Windows or Mac computer. The film and bonus features are in Mandarin with optional English subtitles. The white subtitles can be a little difficult to read at times and would have been better in yellow.
 Beautiful Photography - But film pace is s-l-o-w November 30, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Having had the awesome experience of traveling down the Yangtze River in China, only months before the Three Gorges Project was completed, and visiting small communities, which would soon be under water, I was really looking forward to seeing this film by renowned Chinese Director Jia Zhang-ke.
What I found was that the scenery was, as expected, gorgeous and the cinematography captured it beautifully and the faces of the residents who were tearing down buildings they had lived in for generations was heart-tugging.
But the story - actually two separate stories - of individuals (one a man; the other a woman) searching for their spouse who they lost in the relocation effort, seemed to get lost in the slow pace of the film and some odd moments which distracted from the "real world" story.
The best scenes were those of the panorama of the river (and the most memorable and beautiful was the lighting of a bridge at night). There are also scenes of the searching husband or the nurse, Shen Hong, in contemplation of their lives. These "framed" scenes were like portraits and as still photos, they could fill a book.
I'm glad for any film that captured the beauty of the Yangtze riverbanks before they were flooded, as it brings back fond memories. But, when filmmaker Zhang-ke tried to draw me in with a plot, the slowness of the pace had me losing attention. The film received great theatrical reviews. It just didn't capture my interest as much as I wanted.
There's lots of bonus material on the DVD including an earlier 70-minute film by Zhang-ke titled "Dong" which is much more disjointed but shows the beginnings of the story in Still Life.
Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"
 The New New Wave November 22, 2008
Of all the great films coming out of China these days, none are more representative of "the real China" than the movies of Jia Zhang Ke. Combining a semi-documentary approach with an occasional touch of surrealism, his hi-def digital video renditions of the lives of ordinary Chinese adapting to the most vertiginous change in the history of the world are eye-popping and achingly beautiful. A must for anyone who cares about the cutting-edge of cinema.
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