Films – Lunar New Year at Metrograph

he Lunar New Year blockbuster rollout is a treasured holiday tradition in multiplexes from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Taipei, but over at Metrograph we’re taking the occasion to celebrate the other side of Chinese cinema—films that challenge narrative convention and turn a critical eye on a changing society. Included in the series are favorites by Jia Zhangke, perhaps the greatest of the “Sixth Generation” Mainland filmmakers; Jiayin Liu’s two-part “home movie” epic Oxhide, shot in her family’s Beijing apartment; and Lixin Fan’s documentary Last Train Home, which depicts, through the microcosm of one family’s journey, the massive annual homeward-bound migration of Chinese workers for the New Year. There’s no place like home for the holidays… but a movie theater isn’t a bad substitute.