Comments on: Chinese Avant-garde Shills for Prada: Is This the Future of Indie Filmmaking? http://dgeneratefilms.com/critical-essays/chinese-avant-garde-shills-for-prada-is-this-the-future-of-indie-filmmaking/ Distributing the finest in Chinese independent film today Sat, 12 May 2012 08:30:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: catcher http://dgeneratefilms.com/critical-essays/chinese-avant-garde-shills-for-prada-is-this-the-future-of-indie-filmmaking/comment-page-1/#comment-1712 catcher Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:28:38 +0000 http://dgeneratefilms.com/?p=2592#comment-1712 Consider that the European art-house film sustained maybe twenty years of innovation, before succumbing to self-parody and convention. But that was before home video, film festival media celebrity, Harvey Weinstein, a world-wide real-estate bubble which made art house theatrical exhibition impossible, and long before utube. Twenty years, in other words, is an uncommonly long period of grace. Or consider American indie film, whose occasional authenticity and anesthetic interest, from "Carnival of Souls" to "Killer of Sheep", depended on its obscurity. The medium couldn't hope to survive sex, lies and videotape, Robert Redford, or Filmmaker Magazine -- and didn't. How long then, really, can we expect Chinese indies to last in anything like authentic form, before the medium expresses little more than the sensibilities of its funders and commercial promoters? Even today these works have qualities and interests which probably exceed the capacities of their authors and directors. But already those qualities are turning into conventions. At best, some measure of authenticity will be retained, as is occasiionally true today of art-house cinema from Asian, Europe and the Americas. What the Chinese need to do is to avoid the fate of American indies. Consider that the European art-house film sustained maybe twenty years of innovation, before succumbing to self-parody and convention. But that was before home video, film festival media celebrity, Harvey Weinstein, a world-wide real-estate bubble which made art house theatrical exhibition impossible, and long before utube. Twenty years, in other words, is an uncommonly long period of grace.

Or consider American indie film, whose occasional authenticity and anesthetic interest, from “Carnival of Souls” to “Killer of Sheep”, depended on its obscurity. The medium couldn’t hope to survive sex, lies and videotape, Robert Redford, or Filmmaker Magazine — and didn’t.

How long then, really, can we expect Chinese indies to last in anything like authentic form, before the medium expresses little more than the sensibilities of its funders and commercial promoters? Even today these works have qualities and interests which probably exceed the capacities of their authors and directors. But already those qualities are turning into conventions.

At best, some measure of authenticity will be retained, as is occasiionally true today of art-house cinema from Asian, Europe and the Americas.

What the Chinese need to do is to avoid the fate of American indies.

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