Affect in Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (2008)

Abstract

Jia Zhangke’s documentary-like 24 City (2008) comprises interviews of personages who have
gone through harsh or even traumatic events. Personal experiences are told in staged interviews
juxtaposed with images of the demolition of a large factory, workers standing in front of the camera
as if posing for portraits, and footages of the process of the demolition and transformation of a
city-scale factory (Factory 420) to a real estate property development (24 City) in Chengdu, China.
Recognizing these interviewees as what Ackbar Abbas terms “posthumous socialist” subjects, this
paper examines the affective structure of the film, in particular the affective contents condensed
in non-narrative elements such as intertitles.