Fresh off the Pingyao Film Festival, the acclaimed auteur has sent shockwaves through the global tracking boards by confirming his upcoming road movie will rely entirely on obsolete, carbon-based crew members.
Fresh off the 10th Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival, auteur Jia Zhangke has sent shockwaves through the global tracking boards by confirming his upcoming road movie "Mamma Dunhuang" will rely entirely on obsolete, carbon-based crew members.
The decision to completely ban artificial intelligence from the set has reportedly chilled interest from major streamers, who were hoping for a streamlined, 14-day rendering schedule. Talent reps circulating the festival expressed deep concern over the director's insistence on location scouting, an archaic pre-production ritual where filmmakers spend thousands of dollars traveling to the actual western Chinese desert just to look at dirt.
The project, starring long-time collaborator Zhao Tao, will reportedly require the acclaimed actress to physically operate a motor vehicle across Central Asia—a logistical nightmare that industry insiders say could have been easily resolved with a twenty-dollar monthly software subscription.
We love Jia's vision, but locking in a 60-day physical shoot when you could just type 'Zhao Tao looking wistful near a dune, volumetric lighting, 8k' into a Discord server is a massive fiduciary liability.
Sources close to the production note that shooting in a tangible environment introduces terrifying, uninsurable variables to the deal, including weather, fatigue, and spontaneous human emotion. At press time, frantic publicists were assuring European distributors that the human crew would at least be treated as poorly as algorithms.