Digging up the ashes of revolution

Freedom is an abstract for those living in a free society, but for those who don't, it's nothing less than the unattainable dream worthy of the ultimate sacrifice.

The only problem is, freedom looks different to different people, and when the plates of history are etched in the acid bath of bloody events, the official version of freedom often comes with prohibitive conditions. Frequently, it doesn't even look like freedom at all.

For Chinese director Jia Zhangke, it wasn't the definition of freedom that pulled him into a comprehensive scavenger hunt for survivors of the Cultural Revolution. It was the smell of a fire that burns still, even 60 years hence.

Zhangke decided to dig up the smouldering ashes in his new movie currently touring film festivals, I Wish I Knew. A feature-length documentary that interviews key participants, victors and victims of China's famed 1949 "liberation," the movie rotates around the fundamental concept of freedom - and what it looks like, and feels like, to those on opposite sides of the struggle.

"I always felt it was important to record the personal stories and the thoughts of the older people who saw so much," says Zhangke, via a Mandarinspeaking translator.

"The Cultural Revolution happened in 1949, and the survivors are beginning to die off from old age. Their history, their stories, would be lost if we didn't record them now for posterity."

Zhangke says many of the stories are hard to hear, which is why the Chinese government was typically against any thorough chronicle of its bloody past. But as the tight reins of communism slacken to accommodate a galloping capitalist economy, the rules of engagement shift -- and that's where Zhangke seized on the opportunity to make his movie now -- before the people and their stories faded into nothing.

"I wanted to do this 10 years ago, and go back even further -- all the way back to 1920 -- but I couldn't because those stories are gone now. The people are dead. Now I start in 1933," says Zhangke, the auteur behind such films as 24 City, Still Life and Unknown Pleasure.

Read more at The Vancouver Sun