Jia Zhangke: Film is a Form of Nostalgia

Abstract

Since his emergence in the late 1990s, Jia Zhangke has employed a calm yet emotionally charged cinematic style to chronicle the transformations of Chinese society amid globalization, gradually shaping a distinctive “cinema of nostalgia.” This paper draws upon Svetlana Boym’s dichotomy of “restorative” and “reflective” nostalgia, alongside Fred Davis’s sociological account of nostalgia and social change, to analyze Jia’s filmmaking trajectory. It examines four key dimensions—narrative themes, visual aesthetics, media technology, and historical consciousness—to reveal how Jia transforms personal memory into collective emotion and historical archive. Beginning with the “Shanxi Hometown Trilogy” (1997–2002) and extending to his latest feature Caught by the Tides (2024), the study highlights Jia’s reflective nostalgia as a lens for dissecting spatial, temporal, and identity ruptures. Ultimately, it situates Jia’s work within the historiography of contemporary Chinese cinema.