Yi Yi, by Taiwanese director Edward Yang, reveals the gulf between the old
and the new.
To know more
World production rank (China) 1999: 10
Local films’ share of domestic box-office
1998: n.a.
Number of films produced
Total population (millions)
1988: 1,121.9
Number of screens
1988: 161,777
1998: 65,000
Cinema admissions (millions)
1988: 18,730
1998: 121
Total film production
investment (US$m)
1999: 34.7
Source: Screen Digest
(contact: David.Hancock@
screendigest.com).
and UNESCO
Institute of statistics. |
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Chinese-language films and directors
have flourished in recent years even as they struggle at home against censorship
and public indifference
 If garnering awards at major film festivals like Cannes is
a sign of good health, then Chinese films, or more accurately Chinese-language films,
are doing splendidly. Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong each had a film that picked
up honours at the last Cannes festival—Jiang Wen’s Devils on the Doorstep, Edward
Yang’s Yi Yi and Wong Kai-wai’s In the Mood of Love respectively—while Ang Lee’s
out-of-competition Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a hit among festival-goers.
Unlike the more mainstream Crouching Tiger, however, the other three films have not
been released on home ground. Devils on the Doorstep, which invited the wrath of
China’s Film Bureau by travelling overseas without going through the proper channels,
probably needs to clear a few hurdles before it can see the light of day. In the
cases of Yi Yi and In the Mood of Love, the reasons are commercial: neither film
is expected to do well at the box-office, and distributors are moving cautiously.
Strangely, the soils that produce these films do not seem particularly congenial
to serious cinema. Scrutiny of these movies’ financing in fact reveals that apart
from Devils, all are international co-productions.
The People’s Republic to this day keeps a tight rein over filmmaking and parrots
the dogma “cinema must serve the people.” But this constraint has been perversely
undermined by modern China’s obsession with its historical destiny. “Fifth Generation”
filmmakers such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou portray China’s past, and are faithful
to the dictums of 1930s “progressive” Chinese cinema in using history to dissect
the failings of the present. But “Sixth Generation” filmmakers, who arrived on the
scene in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, trumpet a very different sense
of aesthetics. Working without official approval, early films like Zhang Yuan’s Mama
(1991) and He Jianjun’s Red Beads (1993) seethe with inwardly directed rage, capturing
the fatalism of post-1989 society. Allegories based on madness, dysfunctional families
and above all alienation are major themes. For these independents, the biggest headache
is seeing their films scoop up awards on the festival circuit while remaining largely
unseen in China itself.
The two currents—historical and contemporary—look set to join in Jia Zhangke’s new
film Platform. A richly layered work, it observes the lives of young people in a
provincial music troupe as they fall in love and are hurtled into the vast unknown
of China’s modernization. Over three hours long but with less than a hundred shots,
the film is unprecedented in mainland Chinese cinema.
Taiwanese films, meanwhile, have won international recognition even though the island’s
film industry has been in decline, with annual output dwindling to 20 films and funding
coming from the government or abroad. Yet Taiwan still manages to produce some of
the world’s best filmmakers, including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang
and Ang Lee—a film-maker with stronger mass appeal than his peers and a track record
in light comedy (Eat Drink Man Woman), adaptations of classic novels (Sense and Sensibility)
and, with Crouching Tiger, old-school swordplay.
Similar financial concerns abound in Hong Kong, home to headline-grabbing art-house
directors like Fruit Chan and Stanley Kwan. The interdependence of mainstream and
non-mainstream cinema is perhaps most prominent here: Chan and Kwan came through
the ranks of commercial cinema during the mid-and late-1980s, when the industry was
enjoying a golden age. Now, however, these directors have to seek financing elsewhere.
With the People’s Republic unlikely to relax its control, and Hong Kong unlikely
to support commercially unviable projects, Chinese-language cinema looks set to follow
the Taiwanese model of international funding. How this process will impact on “Chinese
national cinema” or even the idea of national cinema per se will prove fascinating
to watch.
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