Archive for the ‘Chinese Cinema Today’ Category

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“Getting the Past Out Loud”: Wu Wenguang’s Memory Project and New Voices In Documentary Film at NYU

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

By Maya E. Rudolph 

From L to R: Dan Streible, Angela Zito, Wu Wenguang, Zhang Zhen

“Independent film has gone from underground to come above ground.” Wu Wenguang’s most recent project in mentorship and documentary filmmaking, which made its US premiere at NYU under the title Getting The Past Out Loud: Memory Projects with Wu Wengugang, is an exploration of individual and collective memory, of personal storytelling, and of the evolving talents of China’s newest generation of filmmakers. The event was organized by Professors Angela Zito and Zhang Zhen at the Center for Religion and Media Studies at NYU, which Zito co-directs and was co-sponsored by the Department of Cinema Studies, where Zhang is Associate Professor. The event was also made possible thanks to generous support from China House.

Wu, often extolled to as the godfather of the New Documentary Movement in Chinese independent cinema, presented two of his own projects at the weekend screening series, but emphasized the significant work of those young people involved in the Memory Project.  “My generation of filmmakers often started out working within the state system, but we were dissatisfied and bored,” Wu expressed in conversation with Professors Zhang, Zito and Cinema Studies Professor Dan Streible. “Filmmaking twenty years ago was about throwing tantrums. The new generation is more introspective, they don’t need to throw tantrums. They’ve adapted a more authentic independent posture.”

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Posted in Academic Resources, Chinese Cinema Events, Chinese Cinema Today, dGenerate Titles, Film Reviews | 1 Comment »

SARFT 101: The Rules of the Censorship Game

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Writing for his blog chinafilmbiz, producer Robert Cain provides an insider’s guide to censorship rules and regulations according to SARFT (State Authority on Radio, Film, and Television). Addressing the sometimes absurd guidelines and loopholes for passing the SARFT censors, Cain discusses the alleged rationale for such rigid criteria in the do’s and don’t's of Chinese industry filmmaking:

Censorship is a hard reality of the movie business in China. If you want to shoot or distribute films in the People’s Republic—the fastest growing and soon to be the largest film territory in the world—you’ll have to deal with censorship, and you’d better know the rules.

Censorship [in China] is designed not only to protect the innocent, but even more to protect the status quo of authoritarian rule. No distinction is made between children and adults; the government holds the ultimate right to decide what content is ‘appropriate’ and therefore available for viewing, irrespective of the viewer’s age.

Detailing the often-lengthy process by which filmmakers submit their screenplays and/or completed films for review by the Censorship Board, Cain lists some of the guiding principles to live by—if your aim is to produce and distribute a state-sanctioned mainstream film.

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Posted in China Today, Chinese Cinema Today | 1 Comment »

CinemaTalk: Interview with Julian Ward and Song Hwee Lim, Editors of The Chinese Cinema Book

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

By Maya E. Rudolph 

Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward are editors of the recently published The Chinese Cinema Book (BFI and Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Song Hwee Lim


Song Hwee Lim is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (University of Hawaii Press, 2006), co-editor of Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film (Wallflower Press, 2006), and founding editor of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas. His next monograph, Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness, will appear in 2013.

Julian Ward


Julian Ward is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies attached to the Asian Studies department of the University of Edinburgh. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas and has written articles on the representation in film in different eras of Communist China of the Sino-Japanese War. He is the author of Xu Xiake (1587–1641): The Art of Travel Writing (2000), a study of China’s foremost travel writer of the imperial period.

The Chinese Cinema Book, published earlier this year, provides a crucial and  comprehensive guide to Chinese cinema history, contemporary scholarship, and a range of discussions of Chinese cinema in both national and trans-national contexts. Incorporating contributions from many leading scholars in the field of Chinese cinema studies, as well as writings from editors Lim and Ward, the book is divided into five thematic sections: Territories, Trajectories, Historiographies; Early Cinema to 1949; The Forgotten Period: 1949–80; The New Waves; and Stars, Auteurs and Genres.

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dGF: In the prologue to “The Chinese Cinema Book,” you state that, despite its rather authoritative title, “this book does not pretend to offer a comprehensive coverage of Chinese cinema throughout its long and complicated history and multifarious manifestations,” but rather aims to provide “an overview of the ‘state of the field’.” In selecting works to represent the “state of the field” and assembling this most recent collection of scholarship, what was your approach to comprehensively taking the temperature of today’s climate for Chinese cinema studies? 

SL and JW:  First of all, we’re fully aware that this is an English-language publication designed to be a useful resource for academics and students, and that it should also appeal to a general readership. This means covering fairly familiar territories while introducing some new areas, and bearing in mind the availability of film materials on DVDs with English subtitles. In our other role as editors of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, we are keenly attuned to the state of the field in terms of established and emerging scholarship, and we therefore attempt to reflect that in this book as well. Overall, we are pleased with the coverage of the book in terms of the range of topics and scholars.

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Posted in Academic Resources, Chinese Cinema Today, CinemaTalk: Conversations on Chinese Cinema Studies, Interviews | No Comments »

dGenerate’s Karin Chien Featured on Filmwax Podcast

Monday, December 5th, 2011

"Little Moth" (dir. Peng Tao)

Check out this podcast: dGenerate president Karin Chien chats with Filmax Film Series director Adam Shartoff on the perks and pitfalls of indie filmmaking worldwide, our philosophy and where the name “dGenerate” comes from, and the uphill battle to bring Chinese independent cinema into world view.

Says Karin:

“The films that we’re distributing here take incredible risks and they’re able to because they do work completely out of the system in China and they don’t have these market pressures to bear as we do in the states. And in a way, that’s crippling when it comes to distribution, but also freeing when it comes to making the films.”

Filmwax, a screening series with an emphasis on Brooklyn-based filmmakers and ventures, recently hosted a mini-series of dGenerate fare: Jian Yi’s Super, Girls! and Peng Tao‘s Little Moth.

Posted in Chinese Cinema Today, dGenerate Titles, Interviews, Other | No Comments »

Kevin Lee Reports on Chinese Cinema Today for “Ebert Presents At the Movies”

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Check out a video produced by dGenerate’s own Kevin Lee for Ebert Presents: At The Movies:

Reporting on trends in the current Chinese cinema landscape, the video highlights three dGenerate titles representing the best Chinese independent documentary has to offer. Zhao Liang‘s Crime and Punishment, Ou Ning‘s Meishi Street, and Jian Yi‘s Super, Girls! Also discussed are Jian Yi’s recently defunct IFChina Original Studio and his approach to independent filmmaking in China.

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Posted in China Today, Chinese Cinema Today, dGenerate Titles, Interviews | No Comments »

Beijing Besieged by Walmart: Development and Sustainability in the Partnership between China and Walmart

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

"Beijing Besieged by Waste" (dir. Wang Jiuliang)

An article by Orville Schelle appeared recently in The Atlantic on the increasingly inextricably relationship between Walmart and China—the home of much of Walmart’s manufacturing and rising numbers of consumers:

These two colossal entities, with such utterly different provenances—the world’s largest corporation and the world’s most populous country—have somehow managed to meet and maintain a state of relatively steady symbiosis, each fulfilling vital needs for the other. Just as China is providing Walmart with the lifeblood of its commercial growth, Walmart is helping the Chinese state not just to satisfy the escalating demands of its consumers but to extend Beijing’s regulatory writ. Together, they are engaging in a bold experiment in consumer behavior modification, market economics, and environmental stewardship. Just how this unlikely partnership will affect the evolution of these two larger-than-life entities is as yet uncertain. But one thing is already clear: how Walmart and China interact with each other over the next decade will be critical to the fate of the planet’s environment.

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Screening China: So Long IFChina Original Studio

Monday, November 28th, 2011

By Dan Edwards

This article originally appeared on Dan Edwards‘s blog Screening China. Reprinted with the author’s permission.

Jian Yi at IFChina Original Studio (Courtesy Screening China)

In my “Newsbites” post of October 29, I noted that IFChina Original Studio, an initiative of Chinese filmmaker Jian Yi and his wife Eva, had been told it had to leave Jinggangshan University. Last Saturday (November 5) Jian Yi issued an official statement confirming the studio’s closure.

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Posted in China Today, Chinese Cinema Today | 1 Comment »

China’s ‘Third Affliction’: David Bandurski on Zhao Dayong, China’s New Cultural Control in the New York Times

Monday, November 14th, 2011

"Ghost Town" (dir. Zhao Dayong)

In an article for the New York Times‘s “Latitudes: Views From Around the World” blog, producer of Chinese independent films and scholar David Bandurski weighs in on recent developments in the Chinese government’s control of “soft-power” artistic and ideological culture. Reflecting on the emotionally-charged reception of Zhao Dayong‘s “unflinching” documentary Ghost Town at  Lincoln Center in 2009, Bandurski comments on the government’s dogmatic “decision” to “lead a renaissance of cultural creation.” Recalling a CCP Politburo announcement in Beijing last month, Bandurski reports:

…I watched the nine members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee preside over a stiffly choreographed meeting of the country’s most senior leaders in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Against a phalanx of red flags and an enormous golden hammer-and-sickle, President Hu Jintao delivered the Chinese Communist Party’s document on “promoting the great development and prosperity of socialist culture.”

The gist of the “Decision” was that China’s ruling party, recognizing that culture is soft power, would lead a renaissance of cultural creation. The message behind the turgid ideological phrasings and the rodomontade about how the party was leading “the great reawakening of the Chinese people” was that China’s leaders would encourage culture so long as it served their narrow political ends. The Decision states emphatically that China’s rank-and-file “cultural workers” must uphold the party’s “main theme” and “keep to the correct orientation” in cultural creation.

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Chinese Cinema’s Future Faces The Power of the Old School

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

By Maya Eva Gunst Rudolph

Candidates applying for Beijing Film Academy wait in line to submit their applications (photo: China.org.cn)

In the richly developing Chinese film landscape, from the most popular epics to the most subterranean and political indies, there’s no denying the power of the old school. Since 1950, when Beijing Film Academy (BFA) and Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama (CAD) were founded, the institution of the film academy has created an inescapable framework of production resources and human networks vital to any aspiring Chinese filmmaker. An open portal to the mainstream film industry and the guanxi system that puts Hollywood’s old boy’s network to shame, China’s elite film academies and the pedagogy therein are widely regarded as a mandatory step for any student with ambitions on either side of the camera.

From the early days of BFA and CAD and with the subsequent rise of Chuanmei Daxue (Communications University of Beijing), Chongqing University’s Meishi Film Academy, and even Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) as comparable institutions, filmmaking education has been widely regarded in China as a prescribed course with a desired outcome. At BFA—the crème-de-la-crème of China’s film academies—curriculum includes a comprehensive integration of film history and theory, practical and technical skills, and the guiding hand of state-controlled production and industry standards. BFA’s handbook specifies that graduating Directing majors “have the knowledge and capability in comprehension of literature, art theories and history; good taste in aesthetics and art appreciation; systematic knowledge of the basic rules of film and television directing; [and] video and audio expressive skills…” Beyond presenting a daunting checklist, BFA’s distinct criteria suggest that theirs is a time-tested formula ensuring that a student with these technical skills and this artistic understanding can become a successful director.

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Posted in Chinese Cinema Today | 1 Comment »

The Future of Chinese Filmmaking: Made in U.S.?

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

By Isabella Tianzi Cai

Sally Liu came from Beijing to get her MFA at Columbia University. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Back in 2005 when I started as a freshman studying film at Boston University, I was one of only two foreign-born Chinese film students there. I remember the surprised look that people often gave me when they learned about my major. At the time, it was rare to see a student from mainland China taking on film as her major, especially at the undergraduate level.

My reason for studying film was a straightforward one. I fell in love with the medium in high school, and I wanted to become a filmmaker. I could also intuit an impending bright future for Chinese cinema, given its vast unexploited market. In this sense I probably have much in common with the thousand or so Chinese film students in the U.S. today.

This is why Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn’s Oct. 2 article “Reel China: Land of Cinematic Opportunity” makes me feel excited about the path I chose. In the article, he describes the trend of U.S.-bound Chinese film students, the pull and push factors for this trend, the challenges faced by the students, their aspirations, and the reality that they face once they complete the programs. Each of these points reminds me of my own experiences and those of my friends’. I can’t help but wonder, if we are being identified as a group, how will we do collectively ten or fifteen years from now? And how do we prepare for the future?

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