What is the 21st Century? | With Yu places
Ifyouregoingtotalkaboutcinemaatpresent,evenifyourenottalkingverythoroughly,itsinevitablethatYuLik-waiswork,ifnothisname,willcomeup.Ifanyonesgotanswersaboutthepresent,itsthemanwhoshotUnknownPleasures.Yuisoneofourgreatestcinematographers,probablythegreatestshootingexclusivelyindigitalformats,andhealsohappenstobeadamngooddirector.Itstheformerthathesbestknown:asJiaZhang-kesdirectorofphotographyandproducer,heformshalfofoneofthegreatpartnershipsinfilmmaking.Thefamousstory(possiblyapocryphal)isthat...
If youre going to talk about cinema at present, even if youre not talking very thoroughly, its inevitable that Yu Lik-wais work, if not his name, will come up. If anyones got answers about the present, its the man who shot Unknown Pleasures. Yu is one of our greatest cinematographers, probably the greatest shooting exclusively in digital formats, and he also happens to be a damn good director. Its the former that hes best known: as Jia Zhang-kes director of photography and producer, he forms half of one of the great partnerships in filmmaking. The famous story (possibly apocryphal) is that Jia saw a few minutes of Yus 1996 documentary Neon Goddesses at a film festival and decided they had to work together. Apart, theyre two singular men who think very seriously about the world they live in and cinemas ability to express it. I think its impossible to call Yus work anything other than "motion pictures;" while we can say that many of his contemporaries model the image on painting or ph...