Following on from Jiang Wen, Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaoshuai, new members like Lou Ye (b. 1965) and Jia Zhangke (b. 1971) debuted on the scene of inde-pendent cinema with Weekend Lover (Zhoumo qingren, dir. Lou Ye, 1995) and Xiao Wu (Xiao Wu, dir. Jia Zhangke, 1997). Over the years, Lou and Jia have become arguably the two most outstanding representatives of the group, with a steadily growing repertoire and a level of creative acumen fitting the strictest definition of film auteurs. Each has cultivated an aesthetic system grown out of their distinct understanding of the cinematic medium and its uniquely figurative mobilisation of time and space in representing Chinese reality and history.

Jia Zhangke is widely recognised for his realist commitment, evidenced by Italian neorealism-inspired stylistic regulars, such as location shooting, long shots, reliance on non-professional or amateur actors, as well as the many Antonionian long takes accomplished through an extremely patient and restrained camera. While a dynamic handheld camera is found in Xiao Wu, Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiaoyao, 2002) and the receiving shot at the beginning of The World (Shijie, 2004), Jia's cinematic world tends to emphasise the distance (but not irrelevance) – both physical and symbolic – between character, background and camera. In the resulting spacious cinemascape, characters and their surroundings coexist in a classic neorealist manner as parallel, mutually complimentary layers of the socio-historical world, often with the human figures roaming at a loss on the surface of the landscape. Observing this futile yet meaningful interaction between human and space is Jia's patient camera that often stays static for a prolonged duration of time or does mostly slow, horizontal pans, thus setting in yet another layer from which to dwell in contemplative observation on the previous two. Avoiding dramatic and singular directionality in both narrative and image, Jia's cinema tends to do what Roger Cardinal wonderfully advocates as ‘a studied dislocation of the gaze from the center of the frame to its quirky circumference’ and cultivates for the spectator ‘a fresh relationship to the image, one in which the whole screen is acknowledged as a surface which is … available to the gaze as an even field of rippling potency and plenitude’.