Jia Zhangke

Being Larger Than Life

To document an extraordinary soul through the lens is to constantly wrestle with the dilemma of completeness. How can one capture the vastness of a life within the limited time of a film? It challenges the filmmaker’s depth of understanding and precision of perspective. Rather than striving for an all-encompassing portrait, it may be more powerful to focus on select moments—those glimmers that illuminate the subject’s essence. The camera becomes not only a tool to pierce through the surface, but also a means for sincere conversation with the person in front of it.