Before his hit film Still Life scooped the Gold Lion award for best movie at the 63rd Venice Film Festival last year, Jia Zhangke was a little known director

He was just the second Chinese mainland director to win the award after Zhang Yimou and it propelled the 36-year-old from "underground director" to mainstream filmmaker.

Still Life has been screened at cinemas that are also showing Zhang Yimou's blockbuster, Curse of the Golden Flower, which has already taken over two million yuan at the box office.

Last week a packaged (and genuine) DVD including Still Life and his former work Dong came onto the market .

At a press conference last week, the 1.7-meter-tall Jia, clad in a gray coat, jeans and a pair of green sneakers, was not talkative and rarely smiled, but underneath his calm, cool exterior, it was clear that there lies a burning determination to succeed.

Jia wrote the screenplays for all his films. Still Life is his fifth feature film, and Dong is his third documentary.

"Dong was made before Still Life, with half of the documentary shot in the Three Gorges area and half in Thailand," Jia said. "While shooting Dong, I found that local people tried to conceal their real feelings and hide from my camera." Seeing this gave Jia the idea of doing a feature film that would try to get at the feelings that people in the Three Gorges area did not want to reveal.

The independent director thinks it equally important to publish his films as DVDs as well as getting them onto the silver screen.

"When you sit in front of a big screen, you are touched by the people and their lives in the film. When you watch it at home alone, the movie may generate another feeling. It is a feeling that is deeper and lasts longer," Jia said.

In fact before he shot to fame, ordinary Chinese audiences only had access to his films by buying pirated DVDs. Jia believes that this has cut box office receipts by one third. Despite this, he says he has mixed feelings about pirated DVDs. "I wouldn't want to stop anyone watching my films, even if it meant their actions were infringing upon my rights," he said.

The three feature films he made prior to Still Life, were Xiaowu (1998), released in 25 countries, The Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures (2002). They won international acclaim but were not released here in China.

All three films focus on the lives of young people in his hometown, Fengyang County, Shanxi Province, his main source of inspiration.

His films are noted for their honest portrayals of life, both good and bad, in rural China. However some local reviewers and cinemagoers have criticized Jia's films for being repetitive and visually coarse. Some have even suggested that he deliberately picks topics that appeal to foreigners' image of China as "backward". Despite this criticism, the director remains undaunted.

"The town is where I am from," said Jia, who lived there for 21 years. "I just shoot my hometown in a realistic way and show exactly what it is like-the people, the streets, the noise and the environment. What you see on the screen is the reality.

"Perhaps not everything looks perfect, but I can't make up what the town is like. I think I should portray it as honestly as possible."

Jia has said he will be sticking to his "realistic" style when he starts work on his next film, Ciqing Shidai (The Age of Tattoo) in March. This film will focus on the year 1975, one year before the end of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). "It was a key moment in time, when urban youth had no jobs and nothing to do. I'll try to convey this important era by focusing on a group of young people," he said.

(Source: China Daily January 18, 2007)