Spectacle, Controversy and the Septic: Pingyao International Film Festival 2019

This is a strange place to have a revelation. I'm sitting in a movie theatre in Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China. I have shrunken into a cosy corporate space which, once the house lights are put out, is soothingly anonymous. I'm briefly hidden from the startling and imposing hubbub of the Pingyao International Film Festival, a "boutique" film festival founded by the great Jia Zhangke in 2017; hiding, as it were, in plain sight. All this festival's state-sponsored glitz, its overproduced sleekness...