Jia Zhang-ke's portraits of China's convulsive change

"Such a quick destruction of a 2,000-year-old town is simply unimaginable," Jia said

Convulsive change is the norm in capitalist China, and since it is also the subject of Jia's films, he said, "I sometimes feel I'm racing against time." At 37 he has amassed a body of work - seven feature-length fiction films and documentaries - that is remarkable for its formal ambition, ethnographic richness and moral weight.

"I don't start from a political standpoint," Jia said. "But if you make a film about China right now, you have to talk about the politics and the changes that are affecting people."

In an increasingly materialist society he gravitates to the have-nots. His films expose the social and spiritual disarray beneath what has been called the Chinese economic miracle.

"Globalization is very complex in China,"

"It has accelerated the consumerist mind-set, but it has also allowed people more access, more information, more technology."