After screening his latest film Caught by the Tides at the Busan International Film Festival, director Jia Zhang-ke met with the press, accompanied by his wife Zhao Tao. A frequent visitor to the BIFF, Jia started by saying he is recovering from eye surgery.
Caught by the Tides repurposes footage Jia shot over a 23-year span. “I started the project when digital cameras first became available to us,” he said. “Over the years I amassed a lot of footage I never used. During the pandemic, when it seemed like one era was ending and another beginning, I decided to edit the footage together.”
While the same lead actors appear throughout the film, Jia said that their characters actually have different back stories. Qiaoqiao, the iconic role played by Zhao Tao, shows up in several variations.
“While editing, I realized that trying to describe a character’s life through words and conversations is very limiting,” Jia said. “That’s why I discarded almost every one of Zhao Tao’s conversations. I thought that without words, I could depict emotions through sounds and noises in the environment. We tried to make the sound design immersive so the audience would experience what the characters are going through.”
Jia described his use of music in terms of quantum mechanics, taking nonlinear approach that allowed him to ignore strict chronologies and make “irrelevant” connections. “We forget memories, but sound and music refresh them for us. They take us to the past. Since memory is fragmented, I felt we could use music in the same way.”
While watching the edit, the Taiwanese musician Lim Giong contributed music and lyrics that commented on the film’s time periods. Because her dialogue is largely absent, the music became Qiaoqiao’s voice.
“This could be an ending or a new beginning,” Jia said. “I will keep shooting in China, maybe a film about Chinese history. What I’m working on right now is a five-minute, AI-based movie. So I’m studying AI technology as much as I can.”
Jia used AI in Tides, at one point changing a movie Qiaoqiao is watching to a sci-fi film about robots. Then he could tie in a later sequence where she encounters a robot in a store.
“I don’t have any preconceptions about AI,” Jia said. “It has good points and bad points.”
In our review from Cannes, Rory O’Connor said of Caught by the Tides, which will be released by Sideshow and Janus Films, “Jia Zhangke’s is often a cinema of déjà vu: “We’re again in the northern Chinese city of Datong,” Giovanni Marchini Camia wrote for Sight and Sound back in 2019, “it’s again the start of the new millennium, Qiao is again dating a mobster, yet no one else makes a reappearance and there are enough differences to signal that this isn’t a sequel or remake.” Camia was writing about Ash Is Purest White yet much of the same could be said for Caught by the Tides, the director’s latest experiment in plundering his archive––indeed his memories––and spinning what he finds into something new. The protagonist of Tides is again named Qiao and is again played by Zhao Tao, appearing here in more than 20 years of the director’s footage and allowing the viewer to watch that singular creative partnership evolve in real time––one of the great treasures of contemporary cinema.”
The post Jia Zhang-ke Reveals He’s Working on an AI Short Film first appeared on The Film Stage.
