A documentary by Jia Zhangke. In Mandarin and Shanghainese with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays Friday to Monday, March 4 to 7, and Wednesday, March 9, at the Pacific Cinémathí¨que

The Cultural Revolution intrudes often in I Wish I Knew, a stylish documentary from Chinese director Jia Zhangke. But the particulars of that tragic period are less crucial than the attempt to reconstruct stories eradicated by Mao Zedong’s disastrous effort to keep his revolution alive and his young people distracted.

This reclamation is done chiefly through the memories of old-timers from all walks of life—people who were, as the filmmaker has said, “harmed by history”. These include a few shapers of events but mostly men and women (and their offspring) who got swept up in the tides of occupation, liberation, and civil war. Some tales are illustrated by photos, like the harrowing shots of one narrator’s revolutionary father, a handsome young man executed by Nationalists in 1949.

More felicitously, there are snippets from old films in many styles, including bits of a 1972 effort by Michelangelo Antonioni. Among interesting subjects, there’s Huang Baomei, a model factory worker who met Mao and played herself in a movie. Elsewhere, a suave elder visits a dance club where they play old American songs; another man recalls what happened to his actor mother and musician sister when they were branded “rightists”; and top filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien explains how he ended up in Taiwan. This is all told matter-of-factly to the camera, with as little emotion as possible, yet you can feel the weight of every word.

Shanghai is the perfect setting for this saga, being the nexus of China’s interface with the outside world. The film, commissioned for the city’s 2010 World’s Fair, also travels to Hong Kong and Taipei to put these recollections in visual context. The sure-handed director also breaks the verbal flow with beautifully shot passages of everyday life, with a lovely, white-shirted woman (Zhao Tao) drifting unseen through the bustle—a ghostly reminder of past lives asking not to be forgotten.