Platform

The masterpiece of the New Chinese Cinema, Jia Zhang-ke's monumental Platform spans the turbulent 1980s by following four performers in the state-run Peasant Culture Group. Based in Fenyang, the director's hometown in the remote western province of Shanxi, these "art workers" praise the late Chairman Mao with approved revolutionary classics. When Deng Xiao-ping institutes an "open door" cultural policy and China begins to move toward Western-influenced consumer capitalism, the newly privatized group starts to sport spandex and play electric guitars. It's sex, cigarettes and rock-n-roll... until dreams are deferred. Platform, the precursor to Jia's Unknown Pleasures, offers vivid insight into modern China. Rich in detail and beautifully shot, Jia's epic yet intimate film exquisitely conveys a sense of time passing and ineluctable change.