Genesis Cinema introduction:
We welcome the Chinese New Year in collaboration with Christine Ni and a screening of Zhang-Ke Jia's exceptional A Touch of Sin. Xueting Christine Ni was born in Guangzhou, during China's "re-opening to the West". As an adolescent, she emigrated with her family to England. After graduating in English Literature and realising that her experiences gave her a unique a cultural perspective, bridging the Eastern and Western, she began translating original works of Chinese fiction. Since 2010, Christine has written extensively on Chinese culture and China's place in Western pop media, presenting publicly in collaboration with companies, theatres, institutions and festivals. Having worked on manhua, documentaries and science fiction, she continues her cultural translation of China, with a mission to help improve understanding of Chinese heritage, culture and innovation, and introduce its wonders to new audiences.
Chicago Reader review:
Jia Zhang-ke's films are valued most here in the West for their glimpses of a changing China and their acute observations of predatory global capitalism; one comes to them expecting a large story writ small. This drama (2013), collecting four tales of deadly violence across mainland China, lives up to that expectation to some extent, though limiting each protagonist to a more compact time frame heightens one's sense of them as individuals, and their impulsive actions remind us of the power of human agency. A former soldier seething over political graft in his little village, a transient who develops a serious gun fetish, a woman whose affair with a married man turns sour, a young man sinking into despair as he bounces from one dead-end job to the next—Jia's primary concern here is the solitary suffering of his characters, punished to the point where they can’t take anymore.
JR Jones
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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