Hello, my name is Justin LeClew and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we are talking about one of the most heralded filmmakers working today, Ja Janker.

And it's great that you introduce them like that because we just spent the last 10 minutes watching several or the beginnings of several like film festival Q&As and masterclasses and you know, directors' dialogues on YouTube trying to get the right pronunciation. Jaya Jean-Kuh. And now we will not say the second name ever again. We're just going to say Jha. We're just going to say Jha. And that's because we don't want to disrespect him because he is a great filmmaker. Now, this was a topic that when Will brought it up, he's like, I know this is big. Because I think that as a director, he is like one of the film festival guys. I remember, I think he said that his last film. like, all right, time to do my homework when it's at TIF. It's time for me to go check it out. Well, I think of Jiazanka as my friend who I see at Tiff. Every few years, he has a new movie. I've been seeing his movies when they're new since I think Still Life, whenever that came out here, maybe 2007, 2008. Visiting his world, you know,

usually at TIF, not really spending much time with him, not at film festivals. I don't know,

it feels like visiting, not just visiting him, but visiting China and being like, okay,

where's China at? Because more than any, like, internationally renowned filmmaker of his

level,

his movies are about the changing face of China of the last 20 years.

And he's a filmmaker whose career started in the film festival circuit could probably not have existed without it because his first three pictures didn't get official releases in China.

Yeah, he's a remarkable figure because he started

as an underground filmmaker in China making movies that were acclaimed on the international

festival circuit, but not commercially distributed at home. You know, they would play at film

clubs or underground screenings. In a documentary that I watched about him, he talks about, like,

that need of wanting to play

in like normal theaters in China and the fact that he went to a, you know, DVD bootleg

stall and they had a stack of his movies.

And he wasn't a huge fan of that either.

But like the fact that they were getting out there, these three-hour experimental narrative features,

that's saying something.

Well, the first of his films to be passed for commercial release in China was his third feature.

I guess by some counts it's his fourth, whether or not you consider an hour-long movie

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