MAINLAND DIRECTOR Jia Zhangke is known for lengthy, perfectly layered works such as Platform, Unknown Pleasures and the marvellous The World, which closes this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.
So, it's interesting to find that he's spent much of the past year encouraging young filmmakers in China to work in a completely opposite style - short films. Jia's energetic promotion of shorts in newspaper interviews and seminars in China has fostered a boom in the genre. He's also curated a programme of short films from the mainland at the Netherlands' Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Shorts are the perfect way for young filmmakers to hone their technical skills and experiment, Jia says. What's more, they make good calling cards for the film industry - producers are more likely to watch a short video than a turgid full-length digital feature.
'Younger people in China now understand that it's more effective for them to make short films,' Jia says. 'This is a new trend that only began last year. To compile the Rotterdam programme, I watched 100 short movies by 100 filmmakers. So, it really seems to have caught on.'
Jia's own films show the effects of China's modernisation and urbanisation on society and culture. He has lately thought about how the availability of digital video and cheap cameras has prompted a huge shift in mainland culture. Until recently, few people could afford any camera, so they rarely thought of themselves in terms of pictures. But that's all changed now, the director says.
'Chinese culture is changing from a written culture to a visual culture,' Jia says. 'This is an important development. I'd never seen the world through a lens until I was 20. My whole way of making sense of what went on around me was through words, through literature. But now, everyday people can take pictures of their own lives. Their understanding of life comes from what they see through the camera lens. They can express how they feel about the changes in their lives through images. This is a very new phenomenon.'
