CHINESE auteur Jia Zhangke won’t be spotted on the Croisette during this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Instead, the celebrated director, whose last four films have premiered in competition at the festival, is at home shooting his next feature.

Jia began production this week on “So Close My Land,” a feature documentary set in his home province of Shanxi. The film is the final, belated installment in Jia’s trilogy of documentaries about various art disciplines, following “Dong” (2006), a portrait of Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong, and “Useless” (2007), which explored China’s fashion industry.

“So Close My Land” focuses on a literature festival Jia co-founded in Shanxi.

The event gathers a multigenerational roster of China’s most esteemed writers, including novelists Jia Pingwa, Liang Hong and Yu Hua (China’s first winner of the James Joyce Award) for public discussions about their craft and contemporary currents in Chinese art and culture.

“We will shoot their approach to creation, discussions of their personal experiences and thoughts on the future,” Jia said. “I hope this will construct a film of Chinese feeling, with a spirit that captures the passage of history.”

(SD-Agencies)