As part of China Week 2024, King’s College London’s Lau China Institute and Garden Cinema’s Chinese Cinema Project presents a special screening of I Wish I Knew.

From the acclaimed 6th Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, I Wish I Knew is a vivid portrait of the fast-changing metropolis and port city of Shanghai. A century-long history of this legendary city is revealed via interviews with eighteen real life characters who have complex personal relationships with the city’s rich cultural legacy. Those interview subjects include filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien, painter Danqing Chen, writer Han Han, and actress Rebecca Pan, many of whom immigrated from the mainland to Hong Kong and Taiwan due to political upheaval.

I Wish I Knew also features a performance from Jia Zhangke’s muse Zhao Tao, against the backdrop of 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

Join us on Wednesday 16 October at The Garden Cinema for a screening followed by panel discussion with experts Chris Berry and Vivienne Xiangwei Guo (King’s College London), chaired by Giulia D’Aquila, PhD student, Lau China Institute.

This is a ticketed event. Tickets can be purchased via The Garden Cinema website.

Members £10

Non-members £12

Director

Jia Zhangke is a renowned Chinese-language film and television director, screenwriter, producer, actor and writer. He is the founder of Pingyao International Film Festival, dean of the Shanxi Film Academy of Shanxi Media College and the dean of the Shanghai Vancouver Film School at Shanghai University. He graduated from the Literature Department of Beijing Film Academy. He is generally regarded as a leading figure of the "Sixth Generation" movement of Chinese cinema

Speakers

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London, and Co-Investigator of the AHRC-funded Chinese Independent Film Archive project (PI: Professor Sabrina Yu, University of Newcastle). He is also co-editor of The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record, as well as various other works on aspects of Sinitic-language cinema.

Giulia D’Aquila is a PhD candidate in Chinese Studies at the Lau China Institute. Her current research focuses on the role that UK-China film co-production plays in the bilateral relation between the UK and China.

Vivienne Xiangwei Guo is a historian of modern China in the history department, King’s College London. Her research focuses on the intellectual, political, and cultural history of modern China, particularly the history of China’s intellectual elites in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century. She is now working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded project that explores the history of French language learning among Chinese intellectuals.

Film run time: 119 minutes