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Jia Zhangke, who had long accompanied his activities as a film-maker with theoretical reflections in the form of short articles, recently published a collection of his selected writings entitled Jia Xiang. Jia Zhangke dianying shouji 1996-2008. Pai dianying shi wo jiejin ziyou de fangshi, Beijing, Peking University Press, 2009 (Jia's thoughts. Jia Zhangke's film notes 1996-2008. Making films is my way of approaching freedom). Bringing together many important texts, this publication marks a retrospective moment in his work. Three essays have been selected for translation in this issue: "Irrepressible Images," written in 2002, but which is also a reworking of two seminal essays published in 1998, "The Age of amateur cinema is about to return" and "Now that we have VCDs and digital video cameras." The article sets out Jia Zhangke's view of how independent film in China developed since the early 1990s. It is followed by one essay on Jia's documentary In Public, dealing more specifically with space as an inspiration for film. Also in 2009, to accompany his latest film, 24 City, Jia published a collection of the interviews on which the film is based, entitled: Zhongguo gongren fangtan lu. Ershisi cheng ji (Interviews with Chinese workers. 24 City). A Collective memory of Chinese Working class, Jinan, Shandong huabao chubanshe. The preface to this collection is also included in this issue. (SV)
One day in 2001, the Beijing Evening News published the following item: a seller of pirated DVDs was arrested in the office of the literature department of the Beijing Film Academy. This person came to the Academy regularly to sell DVDs to teachers and students, and was denounced by some students with strong feelings about intellectual property rights. The literature department was also drawn into the matter because it had offered him a place to sell his DVDs. The unofficial version of the story was even more colourful: the seller had not been denounced by a student, but by a colleague engaged in the same pirate trade. This sounded like the plot of a gangster film, and what made it even more absurd was that it had happened at the famous Beijing Film Academy. At most, the offender could be called a retailer, but as the story of his fortune...