DONG (Hong Kong-China / 2006)

If Jia Zhang-kes masterful new narrative film, Still Life (2006), could also be seen as a documentary, then perhaps his first feature-length documentary, Dong (East), should be examined as a work which contains fictional elements. For instance, Jia regular Han Sanming, who plays one of the protagonists in the Golden Lion winning effort, appears in Dong as if he was in character, becoming thoughtful and morose while gazing across the Yangtze River to the town of Fengjie as it gradually turns into rubble due to the construction of the monumental (and controversial) Three Gorges Dam nearby. (Also, there are certain shots that surface in both films.) Jia was invited to the Sichuan province by acclaimed Chinese figurative painter Liu Xiao-dong -- who was previously seen in Wang Xiaoshuais The Days (1993) and Jias own The World (2004) -- to film him while he worked on a large polyptych of 11 haggard, near-naked laborers (many of whom are also present in Still Life). Jia captures the paintings and the bodies with slow pans that, much like the art itself, blur into the overwhelming milieu which surrounds them. (Since Dong was reportedly conceived first, its quite possible that Still Life simply ended up being the extention of what Jia discovered on his journey.) The second half of this 66-minute film takes place in Bangkok, where Liu attempts to do the same with just as many young female "models." Much like what he did with Han earlier, Jia follows one of the girls in attempt to gain a scope of her displacement in this rapidly changing part of the world (when she appeared on a neon-lit overpass I thought Jia was about to pull a Hou). Exquisitely shot on high-definition video -- by Jia, his long-time DP Yu Likwai, along with Chow Chi-sang and Tian Li -- Dong is accomplished enough to stand on its own, but it functions best as a companion piece to Still Life.

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*DONG premiered at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, where it won the "Open" and the "Doc/It" awards. No U.S. distributor at the point.