In Datong, an industrial city in northeastern China, Qiaoqiao makes a small living as a singer and nightclub dancer. When her lover Bin leaves the city without a word in search of a better life, she begins a years’ long search that spans the whole nation along its profound social transformations. 

Assembled from footage shot over a span of more than twenty years, Jia Zhangke crafts a boundless story of enduring but fragile love, anchored by the eternally captivating presence of Zhao Tao.

The screening on Friday 11 April will be introduced by Tony Rayns and followed by a conversation between Simon Field and Tony Rayns.

Simon Field was the Director of Cinema at the ICA from 1988-1996. In those years and those of the Director of Cinema before him, Archie Tait, the ICA Cinema, guided by the expertise of Tony Rayns, was the first to release in the UK many of the now recognised major figures of Asian Cinema: the Fifth and Sixth Generation of Chinese cinema, the emerging Taiwanese cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, the Japanese cinema of Takeshi Kitano and Otomo and Hong Kong's Wong Kar-wai.

In their conversation following the screening of Caught by the Tides, Field and Rayns will explore Jia's re-assment of his own past and its place in the wider context of past Asian cinema.