Truth after cinema: The explosion of facts in the documentary films of Jia Zhangke

This article identifies and elaborates on two models of resistance evident in JiaZhangke’s film corpus. The deployment of different cinematic strategies produces an experimental calling into question of the value of truth and of truth as value. In the films here analysed Jia moves from resistance through organic observation to a model of resistance structured around a series of fabulations. If the first regime addresses the truth of ideology, then the target of the second is the ideology of truth. It is in this passage that Jia enters political cinema, collapsing the distinction between factual and fictional and opening up a space that belongs to no collectivity.