Shu Haolun's "No. 89 Shimen Road" won the top prize at CIFF, but wasn't shown on Awards Night.

The Nanjing-based China Independent Film Festival (28 October-1 November 2011), unlike the Beijing Independent Film Festival described previously, benefited from a substantial degree of official and semi-official “cover”. Unlike BIFF, there is a certain amount of practical compromise with official bodies and officially approved cinema: purity isn’t such an issue.  Co-sponsors include the Nanjing University School of Journalism and Communication, The Communication University of China (Nanjing) and the RCM Museum of Modern Art. The second day of CIFF includes a forum attended by local propaganda department officials. A sidebar of the festival (nicknamed the “Longbiao Section” for the dragon-headed insignia that appears at the beginning of all officially approved film prints in China) included screenings in a luxurious commercial cinema of several films that that are strictly speaking non-independent (i.e. censor-approved) but are made in a spirit of independence. These films would not appear at BIFF, for example, but might show later in official venues like Beijing’s Broadway Cinematheque MOMA, where approved “arthouse cinema” (i.e. non-commercial) finds a refuge in Beijing.

The core of CIFF, though, consists of four sections of new “unapproved” films: the feature film competition; a carefully curated set of documentary features — split in two, a “Top 10 Documentaries of the Year” section, and a set of new documentaries (the next ten best?); 2 sets of short fiction films; and two programmes of experimental films. Other sidebars included four films from Caochangdi Workstation’s Folk Memory Project and a Goethe Institute-sponsored set of films from the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

Pema Tseden's "Old Dog" was screened in place of "No. 89 Shimen Road"

As with BIFF, CIFF’s selection of new features was problematic: there has been a worrying dearth of excellent, festival-worthy new Chinese indie fiction features the past year and a half (with a few notable exceptions: in particular a mini flowering of Tibetan language features led by Pema Tseden and Sonthar Gyal). And I think the awards reflected this. The jury (directors Wu Wenguang & Zhang Ming, NYU professor Angela Zito, novelist Sun Ganlu, and curator/critic Li Xianting) gave their Grand Prize to Shanghai director Shu Haolun’s bold first fiction feature No. 89 Shimen Road. That film’s direct evocation of the June 4 1989 Tiananmen protest movement, however, may have caused a slight programming hitch. The winning competition film is usually given a final prominent screening following the awards ceremony. This time, CIFF replaced it, for “technical reasons”, with one of the Jury Prize winners: Pema Tseden’s very fine Old Dog. The other jury prize winner was Wang Chao’s welcome return to independent filmmaking Celestial Kingdom, a rather conceptual work of fiction infused with a kind of cold moral fury at Chinese society’s moral collapse.

Though there were some stunning experimental features (expect to see a few at prominent international film festivals coming soon), most of the action and controversy revolved around the new documentaries. This is where heart and soul of Chinese indie filmmaking lives today. There is what one could call a mainstream school of Chinese “realistic” documentaries — let’s call them ultra-realistic docs — that dominates today, both in film festivals in China and overseas, and that preoccupies the academic, theoretical, critical discussion that has flourished around Chinese documentary filmmaking.

Briefly (and I know I’m oversimplifying, but I plan to write more extensively on this later), this school is derived from direct cinema, under the aegis of the cinemas of Frederick Wiseman and Ogawa Shinsuke. These filmmakers strive for a seemingly transparent, so-called direct representation of “truth” and “reality”, unmediated by authorial (i.e subjective) intervention. Their inspiration can be historical, archival or ethnographic, with filmmakers immersing themselves for months or even years in the lives of their subjects, then emerging with often very long documentaries that transform their experiences into cinema with minimal “subjective” distortions. Issues of ethics then emerge: the relative positions of the filmmaker and subject (are filmmakers intellectuals looking down on grassroots subjects from a position of “superiority”?); issues of consent and (mutual, explicit, endorsed) exploitation; the ethics of representation of the other; and the rights of audiences, directors, subjects, and so-called experts to challenge all these things. A refreshingly different school, recently activated in Chinese indie doc circles and in evidence at this year’s CIFF, takes documentaries as strictly personal, autobiographical, even prima facie solipsistic texts, and films and edits accordingly, highlighting the presence of the filmmaker and the interaction between what’s in front of and who’s behind the camera. This obviates a host of problems outlined above, but introduces its own very different issues of aesthetic criteria, social relevance, and moral obligation.

The filmmakers' declaration posted at CIFF (photo: Cinemascope Magazine)

These issues boiled over in a striking way at CIFF. As I reported in Cinemascope, a seminar on documentary ethics, attended by theoreticians, critics, and filmmakers, drew the lines, as directors struck back (verbally, though forcefully) at the academics for attempting to control the discourse around their films. The next day, we had something like a dazibao moment: dazibao are literally “big character posters”, like the kind Chinese Maoist youth used to use to denounce their counterrevolutionary elders 40 years ago or, perhaps more to the point, like the posters that appeared denouncing lack of democratic progress at the Democracy Wall during the so-called “Beijing Spring” in late December 1978. Many of the documentary directors, along with festival staff and audience members, worked to produce a two page declaration rebutting what they saw as an unwelcome academic hegemony over their art. The manifesto (titled Shamans · Animals) was posted outside the closing ceremony hall and distributed by hand (I translated the document into English at Cinemascope). And the controversy continues: someone else will have to summarize the final chapter of this continuing debate. Those of us attending the CIFF closing ceremony cum late-night party could see, through a glass door, an intense meeting taking place in an adjacent room, where the filmmakers and critics were still at it, continuing to hash out and perhaps resolve some of their differences.

It’s striking to see how critically engaged cinematic discourse is with Chinese politics and culture at the present moment: when nervous, insecure officials feel the need to interfere; and where practitioners and analysts engage with anger and passion. After just a month watching movies in China, it’s hard to imagine a national cinema where the stakes are higher right now.

Relevant Classroom Use

"Madame" (dir. Qiu Jiongjiong)

Qiu Jiongjiong is an artist who paints and makes films; but more importantly, art for him is a way of life, full of vitality and laughter. The preciousness of his work, aside from being technically accomplished with the brush and lens, lies primary in his own personality and attitude. Surprise, enthusiasm and wonder direct his approach to the world and its actors. Everyone plays a special and unique role on the stage of life, author and the viewer included.

In August UCCA (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art) in Beijing held a retrospective of Qiu’s documentaries, curated by master of indie film Zhang Xianmin, including the première of Qiu’s latest work My Mother’s Rhapsody. Art and life have interplayed in Qiu’s personal history since the beginning:  born in 1977 in Sichuan, he grew up among actors (his grandfather was a famous Sichuan Opera performer), and started painting and wandering around the stage since he was a child. He still holds the amazed gaze of the child marveling at (re)telling his family’s history, as an ordinary epic saga in black and white poetry, reconstructing and reshaping memories. With the exceptions of Madame (2010) and A Portrait of Mr. Huang (2009), his documentaries are all about his relatives, playing their own role, making up the “Chatterbox Trilogy”. It would be insufficient to go in depth here with all Qiu’s documentaries, any of them worthy of its own entry. But a precis of his Trilogy could help in beginning to approach and to enjoy his poetry.

The Trilogy opens with The Moon Palace (2006-2007) that dip us into Qiu’s father’s restaurant of the film’s title, closing after years of glorious activity. Mr. Qiu and his customers, mostly friends, are devoted to good company, wine and its pleasure: poets and philosophers of life, connoisseurs of master Li Bai, the classics and the Sichuan opera. The documentary atmosphere is inebriating, taking the viewer along the speeches, through the flow of life and death, following the waters of the river, pouring a gentle cloud of nostalgia and irony.

Then follows the short documentary “Ode to Joy” (2008), a “movie dedicated to the living happiness”, as stated by the director. Actually, this is the performance on stage for a passing commemoration: a ode to the music of life and its joy in the memory of Qiu’s grandfather.

My Mother’s Rhapsody (2011) is the last episode, confronting Qiu’s sixty year-old father and his tenacious eighty year-old mother. Time is changing and Qiu Jiongjiong’s grandma’s house has been demolished (a contemporary drama also faced in the film Meishi Street): in her looking for a place where she can keep her autonomy and vitality on, she confronts with her sons’ families and changes in habit, reconstructing the saga of her life.

Outside of this trilogy, A Portrait of Mister Huang and Madame (mentioned in Kevin B. Lee’s video “New directions in Chinese Cinema”) share Qiu’s same approach of (de/re)constructing narrative. Retired policeman Huang and the talkative tailor/ Madame Bilan de Linphel (“an angel and a ghost among us”) are characters on their own stage, seized by Qiu’s curious but respectful eye.

Qiu is eager to “discover new things” but the preciousness of his search is led by surprise and marvel at small daily gestures and words. Everyone is part of the comedy of life, unique and rare, their micro-history mysteries lead to the macro-level flow of time and space. A multi-faceted world is recomposed by locality and multi-vocality, as pieces of a fragmented mirror are re-composed with different perspectives, like a cubist composition.

The theatre company and performance atmosphere permeate and shape Qiu’s temperament, and are reflected in his narrative technique. Respectful of the self-telling characters, he (re)constructs his own version and memory. Montage editing serves as a core part of his work, partly recalling a vaudevillian style (as suggested by critic Wang Xiaolu), maybe inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s films, which were screened to him as a child by his grandfather. The “authenticity” of documentary is then deconstructed by the director, with surrealism and irony incorporated in the work.

This is just an initial account of Qiu Jiongjiong’s works. As inebriated and inspired as the people in the The Moon Palace, to flow along with Qiu’s narration and contemporary memory is definitively a worthy poetic experience.

Sara Beretta is an anthropologist and PhD student at Milan University, researching Chinese independent cinema and visual production.

Relevant Classroom Use

Zhang Xianmin

Following his recent critique on the state of Chinese cinema “Daytime Booze Nighttime Party,” Chinese film producer / critic / programmer / professor Zhang Xianmin offers further thoughts on current trends in the independent film scene.  He also constructs an alternative history of modern China through several documentaries, including three films by pioneering investigative filmmaker Hu Jie, In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, Though I Am Gone and East Wind Farm Camp (all available through dGenerate)

I have tried to translate Zhang Xianmin’s essay as close to the original as possible; however, there were instances where I had to abandon the Chinese expressions in the essay for more appropriate English terms.

- Isabella Tianzi Cai

Film festival organizers for independent Chinese cinema are slowly consolidating into distinguishable communities. This phenomenon is similar to what happened around 2005. At that time, many independent productions came out, and they did not take place in major cities; instead, many celebrated local cultures. However, up till now, these festivals have yet to develop into unique brand names, indicative of their unique local cultures. For example, Ou Ning’s U-theque Organization helped organize film screenings in the Pearl River Delta and also held the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival. For another example, some people from Fujian Province organized a cross-strait film festival, resembling the work by the Taiwan Film and Culture Association. Yang Jin also wanted to organize a film festival showing films that reflected authentic local Shanxi culture; unfortunately, it did not happen as he wished. I think there will more such activities in the future.

There is much room for idealizing film-related activities in China, just like there is much room for so-called media expansion, commercialization, and civil rights movement right now. I think they resemble the rarefied air in high-altitude places. Chinese independent cinema lacks oxygen, therefore, we can idealize it.

This essay focuses on particular films.

There are many, but none too good.

The Spicy

Single Man (dir. Hao Jie)

The spicy films refers to the extremely violent and sexual films; in other words, they are the films that must show either blood or flesh. These traits seem contrary to the rapid growth of art films in the past two to three years. Most art films can be thought of as being “fresh”; by that, I mean they are more or less the same as a nun who falls in love but curbs her love, or a boy who is gay but never comes out of the closet. The violent and sexual films usually deal with the blue-collar cohort. I doubt if anyone can predict how much longer they are going to stay in vogue to survive till the next video gallery age.

Typical spicy films are getting more spicy nowadays. In most cases, they are not accepted by film festivals in China, which I find to be quite sad. I like to imagine: ten years down the road, will we hold a film festival for B-movies of this type? In my opinion, international co-productions Spring Fever and She, a Chinese are somewhat spiced. The Cockfighters by Jin Rui and Single Man by Hao Jie are both spicy. Of course we can treat their spiciness as a joke because of their stories. After all, their messages are proper.

As for the other ones produced in 2011, I do not think very highly of them. Put in a nice way, they started a cult film culture. Put it in a neutral way, they were reflective of the changes in society. However, put it in a bad way, they were not as innocent as we would like them to be. I am against today’s film censorship program. I do not want to comment on every single film. I think most people have not had the chance to watch the films that I have, so it is not a good idea to discuss them here. The circulation of independent films in China has shrunk in the past decade. The available platforms are not sufficient at all. You, my reader, will be the proof of my argument. You will see how many of the following films you have seen. The typical spicy fiction films include Wang Liang’s Ideal by Gao Xiongjie and Muona Summer by Wang Lulu. The typical spiced documentaries include All About Gay Sex by Zhou Ming. We cannot judge a film by how spicy it is. Personally I liked All About Gay Sex most of all. Wang Liang’s Ideal did all it needed to do for a fiction film, but it was short of something. The acting in Muona Summer is bad, especially that of the actors. The acting shifts from the spicy to the fresh many times, and it made spectators schizophrenic. The best sequence of Muona Summer is the end credits.

These films are not famous compared to those that have received international recognition. Interviews dominate All About Gay Sex, and they span several topics such as love and relationship, first love, and extramarital relationship. Every subject tries to hide nothing from the camera; they openly discuss their sexual intercourse, their sexual partners, their feelings, etc. There are not insert shots showing anyone in action; everything is based on words. These are my personal feelings, and I will not be surprised if others find the film boring. Besides this film, the documentaries by Li Ning, Wu Haohao, and Xie Jianqiang are also spicy in my opinion.

Fresh and Artsy

The films that I have mentioned above are all art films. However, most art films are graceful, subtle, and restrained (in contemporary literature, being graceful, subtle, and restrained is outdated; it may be better to group them as the humming or muttering films and the dainty films, as opposed to the roaring films and the sleazy films).

One example is Rivers and My Father by Li Luo, which was not accepted by any international film festivals but was screened at the Chinese Independent Film Festival. It is the story of a man who tries to erase and reconstruct his memories. Empty Iron Mountain by Gao Zipeng, sponsored by the 1st China independent Film Fund, is an art film for the middle aged. It is the story of an intellectual who disappears and dies on purpose (this film is supposed to be completed in 2011).

Most fresh and artsy films present intellectuals’ and the bourgeois class’s stories. However, they have a blue-collar tendency too because going to the factory workers and farmers used to be a fresh endeavor in revolutionary times. Moreover, Jia Zhangke is also a big influence in the most recent decade. Sun Spots by Yang Heng (a feature-length fiction film) and Male Cousin (a short fiction film, author unknown) are examples of films about junior delinquents in 2010.

Male Cousin is what I mentioned earlier about fresh and artsy films. The story is about a boy who falls in love with another boy but never makes it known to the other. A college art student returns home during his school vacation. He wants badly to meet his fictive cousin, who has gone to national service. They finally meet each other. The college boy gets to see his fictive cousin’s bare shoulders in some photos, and they take the same bus before leaving each other for good. This film was made by two college students in Xuancheng, Anhui, which I suppose was their hometown. It is a good film. Many scenes are rendered appropriately, the plot and the acts are precise, the violence in the film stops just in time, sex never takes place. It is artsy, cool, sexy, close to life, and not at all contrived, just like this piece of dialog, a comment about A Better Tomorrow by John Woo, in the film: “See how constrained gay movies were back then!”

Reconstructing The History of the People’s Republic of China’s

Hu Jie, director of In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul, East Wind Farm Camp and Though I Am Gone

Thanks to the work by independent filmmakers, up till now, we have accumulated a body of works that could be used for New China’s history, outside the official rhetoric. I made a chronological list below, and it should cover all the important historical periods. Although some of the films below were made much earlier, this list is completed in 2010.

This list contains many sensitive words. If any reader finds it incomplete in some way, please note that it is not because I did not include it, it is because my editor tries to keep me safe. If you can spot a missing item, it shows that you are very good. Anyone can try to add what they think is missing.

Bao Feng Zhou Yu [Tempest], Xie Tieli, 1961 – land reform
Storm under the Sun, Peng Xiaolian & S. Louisa Wei, 2009 – court case of Hu Feng
In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, Hu Jie, 2005 – anti-rightist movement
Chronicle of a Chinese Woman, Wang Bing, 2007 – the great famine
East Wind Farm Camp, Hu Jie, 2008 – the great famine
San Li Dong, Lin Xin, 2006 – 17-year coal mining business
Though I am Gone, Hu Jie, 2006 – earlier years of the cultural revolution
Buried, Wang Libo, 2009 – Tangshan Earthquake and the latter years of the cultural revolution
Tong Xue [Classmates], Lin Xin, 2009 – economic reform
60, Zhang Ming,2009 – economic reform
Petition, Zhao Liang, 2008 – contemporary

I want to conclude by quoting documentary filmmaker Mao Chenyu: “Where I am now, let it be history.” If you deny that history is that of the third-person, be it micro or macro, then you own it too. “Where you are now, let it be history.”

Relevant Classroom Use

By Zhang Xianmin

Translated by Isabella Tianzi Cai

Zhang Xianmin

In this essay, Zhang Xianmin, Professor of Beijing Film Academy, film producer and critic, and organizer of the China Independent Film Festival, comments on the absurdity of China’s film culture and industry today. The essay is divided into four parts: the current cultural milieu, Chinese films’ box office, international film festivals, and the role of the Internet. He argues that first, vibrant film culture exists only in a few major Chinese cities while zero film culture exists in all other places; second, mainland Chinese cinema is not competitive in the global market because it is yet to develop any unique and cross-cultural popular genres; third, award-winning Chinese films at various international film festivals do not have much influence on Chinese cinema but are heavily oriented towards China’s social and political realities; and lastly, Chinese audience consume more foreign films than the other way around. To get his points across, he draws examples from his own experiences as a judge at several international film festivals. Though he can be extremely ironic at times, he shares his most honest thoughts about contemporary Chinese cinema with us in this essay.

I have tried to translate Zhang Xianmin’s essay as close to the original as possible; however, there were instances where I had to abandon the Chinese expressions in the essay for more appropriate English terms.

- Isabella Tianzi Cai

Daytime Booze, Nighttime Party: An Essay on the Lacklustre International Influences of Chinese Cinema in Recent Years

Zhang Xianmin
September 29, 2010

Our Current Cultural Milieu or the So-called Film Environment

Contemporary Chinese culture shows typical signs of a cultural backwater. The creation and recognition of new local cultures are heavily reliant on the existent fame and commercial power of more prosperous places. Cultural resources are clustered in big cities; the rest of China are cultural deserts. If we call this a transition period with Chinese characteristics, it might as well be unprecedented in human history. On the one hand, the cultural development of China lags behind its economic development because the former developed under various kinds of restraints and unhealthy favoritism (we developed but without making progress). On the other, Chinese culture does not have any real power in society; what it has are money-making industries (just like our real estate industry) and politically driven propaganda (in the name of spiritual development). The differences between China and other culturally more developed countries are both the lack of investment by big corporations and the lack of tax incentives for individual cultural workers.

Film is part of this larger picture. China’s box office revenue generated by domestically produced films has increased rapidly in recent years. However, the money has come from a limited number of blockbusters which gave no respect whatsoever towards our traditional cultural values. The government is in favor of high movie ticket prices; it is making our film industry into a capital-intensive industry. If a director tries to make a film, he or she will only get the script approved if the film can help the relevant gatekeepers either get rich or get promoted. These gatekeepers don’t care about the film industry. Their children study overseas, and their only wish is to wait until they have the money to emigrate. Ironically, they deem China not a good place for their children because of its bad culture.

Under the Hawthorn Tree (dir. Zhang Yimou)

I can outline three kinds of games that are played in contemporary China. First is the game of political leverage. For example, [Communist Party leader] Bo Xilai’s son Bo Guagua studies in London. Guagua came back to China once and delivered a speech in Peking University about his determination to contribute to China’s cultural industry. Many years ago Kim Il-Sung’s son said the same thing to his father. Second is the game of money. Han Sanping said that he wanted to invest 6 billion yuan in turning Huairou into China’s Hollywood. Jia Zhangke also said that he would donate 200 million yuan to support young Chinese filmmakers. Third is the game of fame. All of China’s film critics in their 60s agree that the love story in Under the Hawthorne Tree (dir. Zhang Yimou, 2010) is absolutely romantic and touching. And the officials at our film bureau insist that Aftershock (dir. Feng Xiaogang, 2010) is a realist film.

This is why we have midnight drinking parties followed by late night dancing parties. So cinema stands alongside alcohol and parties.

Under this condition, it is meaningless if a film wins an award in an international film festival. Time has changed. Now is different from ten years ago. An award-winner has little influence on Chinese cinema. Awards matter less than more practical things. The general public lives under stress. They consume bad popular culture and they are in turn the shapers of that bad popular culture. At least that’s their relationship with China’s mainstream media.

Box Office

Only Hollywood and a few other big conglomerates have the power to market domestically successful Chinese blockbusters in the international market; maybe one film per year with a box office revenue of $20 million gets that attention. China distributes two to four of its films in 20 countries worldwide, but the countries are small countries like the one that trapped its coal miners underground for over a month. There is nothing to be proud about the sales because they are basically effortless deals. China makes about 5 million yuan for each of these films. But the domestic Chinese audience cannot care less about them – either they cannot find these films or they will not watch them.

Chinese cinema is not competitive when it comes to box office. Westerners control almost all the channels for distribution. At the same time, Chinese cinema will not develop any particular type of popular film genre because of prolonged years of cultural suppression. The most influential genre we have had is kung fu films. Yet it was the Hong Kong film industry that first capitalized on them. What original genre can the mainland Chinese film industry come up with? If anyone knows the answer please let me know. I believe that if anyone still reads my essay today it means he or she can probably get into contact with me. To add to that, American genre films were created by Americans themselves.

Film Festivals

Much has been said about film festivals. Most awards go to middle-aged filmmakers (because older filmmakers have received what were due to them and younger filmmakers are not as good yet); they include Yu Guangyi, Zhao Liang, Ying Liang, Liu Jiayin, Li Hongqi, Guo Xiaolu, etc. Others include Wanma Caidan, Zhao Hui, Yang Heng, Xu Tong, etc. Liu Jiayin is the youngest among them, but she came into fame too young, the fact of which complies with Zhang Ailing’s notion that females must get famous when they are young. Award-winners in the short film category include Shu Haolun, Chen Tao, Li Jia, Xi Xueqing, etc. Which one or ones of them are influential in Chinese cinema? Probably none. Their films have more impact on Chinese society than on film per se. Shall we conclude that mainstream Chinese films (as opposed to independent Chinese cinema) in general does not reflect Chinese society? Or can we say that westerners are scheming to only give awards to films that will not sell?

In the most recent decade, film criticism in China has become commercialized. That is why people no longer have faith in film criticism but in awards. Although judging a film in this manner is extremely narrow-minded, it is the only credible way at the present to gauge the artistic value of a film, just like Churchill’s comments on democracy – he said that it is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

I have been on the award committee at over ten film festivals. The most serious and professional behavior that I have observed with the people in the committee in my work unit, Beijing Film Academy, only appeared once during a meeting for distributing bonus housing. As for our regional film festivals, Hong Kong is a truly developed cultural center; South Korea entered this category probably ten years ago, but Taiwan is still on its way there.

I will comment on the different official dispositions towards film festivals in different countries. While I was in Taipei, in the middle of a discussion about the awards, two girls entered the compound and sat in for the discussion. Out of my experiences in this kind of situation in mainland China, I asked wittily if they were volunteers, and if not, what they were doing here. The award committee gave the explanation that they were representatives sent from the cultural bureau and they were here to monitor the discussion. To put it more frankly, they were there because the institution that they belonged to subsidized part of the festival. Once their identity was revealed, members of the award committee, including me, expressed our reluctance to have them be present. As a result, the two girls left the room, and they stayed in the corridor for the entire morning. Later I learned that this kind of occurrence is not unusual in Taiwan. Since older officials are busy, their younger colleagues are sent in for similar kinds of chores.

In contrast, during the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), South Korean officials attended the opening ceremony, wanted to give welcome speeches as well as speeches that showed their passion and determination for the promotion of culture. Probably to subvert and reduce the amount of bureaucracy involved in the film festival, the cocktail party for the opening ceremony at the PIFF had everyone stand up (since there were no chairs), and the only person in control of the situation was the DJ. High-level officials tended to get tired easily, they probably could not digest well when eating while standing up, and they probably could not enjoy the music chosen by the DJ. Perhaps it was somewhat embarrassing to have them wait in line to get their fill of wine, yet it would be more embarrassing for them to call on their inferiors to carry their plates and cups. The number of guests that one was allowed to bring was limited. The secretary of their minister of culture wrote emails to the PIFF organizers, asking them to give the minister some time to deliver a speech about current cultural policies. However, the PIFF organizers retained the right to cut the minister’s speech. The speech was kept at roughly 20 seconds, and that was just enough time for making greetings. The mayor of Pusan wished to say something at the film festival too; however, it was not executed either. The office of the PIFF had been inside a simple iron shed until this year when it was moved into a real building. Last year, five presidential candidates wished to speak at the festival but they were all rejected, none of them came in the end. That was probably the hardest time for the PIFF.

Fighting the power falls on the shoulder of every single one of us. It need not be something grand in scale but little things that matter. Justice may not be the goal when it comes to art, and we know that art is often not about justice, but fighting the power helps protect the working environment by keeping it as professional as possible.

The Internet

In terms of its influence on the world wide web, Chinese cinema can be said to exert more influence in the international market before finding a place in its domestic market. Majority of international audience is not interested in Chinese cinema. The interest flows in one direction only. Chinese-language netizens are quick to produce subtitles for newly released films; they share these subtitles with others. However, there is not a single influential Chinese film critic in the English-language world, and there is literally no one interested in supplying subtitles for our domestically produced blockbuster The Founding of a Republic. In the English-language world, Chinese-language films hardly exist. As for what I said earlier about the relationship between the international and the domestic markets, there are some Chinese viewers who risk climbing over the great firewall of China to watch Chinese-language documentaries that are banned in China.

Summer Palace (dir. Lou Ye)

In 2005, the year that Lou Ye’s Summer Palace came out, I asserted that Chinese cinema did not have political films but only subservient films and art-house films. If politics are detected in any art-house film, it must have ended up so in secret. At that time, only three to four filmmakers dared to embed explicit political messages in their works. However, the number of people who dare to do the same has increased exponentially over the past few years because of a series of social changes and ironically too, the ever stricter censoring going on in the Internet. After a certain event takes place, videos that document it are edited fast and put on the Internet for immediate viewing (the fastest that I have seen is a next-day release). These videos vary in length. They share a common disregard or disrespect for copyright issues, which are capitalist in nature. They use streaming technology. As compared to the dissemination of their content, their form matters little if anything at all. Their purpose is to have as many people as possible watch them and take immediate actions. These filmmakers do not care if their works are films. Some of the longer videos or feature-length films are produced by professional filmmakers, who do not submit their works to any film festival. They do not need anyone to assess the artistic value of their works. The names of these people are sensitive search words in China. Puzzled readers can try to do a search of them by first climbing over the great firewall of China.

Some films have sexual content; sometimes this is not included deliberately by the artists but happens by accident; it depends on how you read it. Two kinds of films are in exile. One is commercialized pornography (art-house pornographic films are allowed in China, so are art-house pornographic videos, which are made using filter lenses and filter paper). They are different from hard-core pornography but are like art-house soft-core pornography. The other kind is comprised of films that deal with sensitive political and social issues. To conclude, at the present moment, politics are more pornographic than art in China. Maybe there is an additional conclusion to be made as well: while politicized art is like propaganda, politics disguised in art is like any other organized or institutionalized activity in China.

Relevant Classroom Use

Relevant Classroom Use

Announcement of the China Independent Film Funding Recipients at the Fanhall website

By Isabella Tianzi Cai

Relevant Classroom Use

Opening Ceremony of the 7th China Independent Film Festival in Nanjing (photo courtesy of CIFF)

By Sara Beretta

The 7th China Independent Film Festival (CIFF), which ran from October 21-25, was a five-day affair packed with screenings and forums. Among the changes in this year’s event were a new curatorial team (Dong Bingfeng, Du Qingchun, Wei Xidi) and a new location, Nanjing University. Under the guidance of Zhang Xianmin (Beijing Film Academy Professor, curator, critic, filmmaker, actor, producer and dGenerate consultant), the curators worked with both the Committee (Cao Kai, Chen Yun, Li Li, Zhang Xiamin, Zhou Kai) and the Selection Team (Cai Meng, Liu Jiayin, Wang Liren, Wei Xidi, Wang Xiaolu) put together a stellar program of events and screenings.

The Festival offered different sections, such as “Feature Film Competition”, “Top Ten Documentaries of the Year”, “New Swiss Films”, “Wide Land and Deep Sky” and “Contemporary Artists New Images Works Exhibition”, as well as indie pioneer Zhang Yuan’s solo exhibition at RCM Museum. A huge audience (mainly students, visitors and professional) and outstanding guests took part to forums and screenings, including dGenerate’s founder and President Karin Chien, and critic, curator and dGenerate’s editorial contributor Shelly Kraicer.

The Jury (composed by experts Han Dong, Cui Zien, Hu Fang, Lu Yue and Ning Dai) assigned the First Prize to Li Ruijun with The Old Donkey, chose Liu Jian’s animation film Piercing for Debut Prize and Rivers and My Father by Li Luo for the Jury’s Prize. All the three works contend with self-reflection and memory, though in different ways and from distinctive perspectives.

Performance by Li Ning's J-Town dance troupe at the CIFF Opening Ceremony (photo courtesy of CIFF)

In lieu of a documentary prize, the festival offers a “Top Ten Documentaries” showcasing the year’s best work in the genre.  Some possessed an ethnographic imprint, like Chen Xinzhong’s Red White, that reports the Sichuan post-earthquake with a very intimate glance; Mao Chenyu’s Triumph of the Will portrays the Tujia minority’s Nuo Opera in Guizhou Province; Qiu Jiongjiong’s movingly original Madame presents Madame Bi Langda telling her life story. The three hour experimental work Tape by Li Ning is also remarkable; what’s more, the author and his crew opened the festival with a memorable live performance. Different in approach and somehow controversial are the works by the young and fresh Xue Jianqiang, with his provocative Martian Syndrome and I Beat the Tiger When I Was Young, and Cop Shop by Zhou Hao (whose film Using is distributed by dGenerate).

Among the many noteworthy narrative features, one standout was the humorous, reality-based Single Man by Hao Jie, wherein the director returned to his country roots to involve peasants in a tricky and reflexive relationship story investigating the course of history and villagers’ life. Single Man and Yuan Fei’s Cleaning both received special mention from the Jury. Tracing the boundaries of the real, unreal and super-real are Li Hongqi’s Winter Vacation and The High Life by Zhao Dayong (in dG’s catalogue with Street Life and Ghost Town).

Along with the screenings, a contemporary audiovisual art exhibition was inaugurated at Shandong Contemporary Art Center, highlighting the relevant emerging relationship between Art and Film in Chinese Contemporary, investigated, studied and discussed here by Samantha Culp.

From this year’s CIFF, one can already sense that Chinese independent film is running through a very particular period fueled by the collective urge of (mostly young) people compelled to express themselves, to record their memories, and to tell a reality that’s becoming increasingly subjective. Armed with increasingly accessible filmmaking equipment, their efforts range from the ethnographically objective to the intensely self-reflexive. The results are moving, exciting and promising.

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Zhang Xianmin, manager of the China Independent Film Fund

At the Pusan International Film Festival, Variety reports that a new fund has been set up to help the production of independent films in China.

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Translation by Yuqian Yan

IV. New Theaters

Another aspect of capital operation is the development of new theaters and their surroundings. A significant trend is that after international capital was fully withdrawn from China due to policy reasons, the newly raised major players are all domestic partnerships.

Megabox Sanlitun Theater, Beijing

Withdrawn capital is mainly from the States and Europe, but those from Hong Kong or Korea are allowed to stay. Even though according to government policy, Hong Kong and Korean capital can only account for a small proportion, their existence allows theaters to maintain their original status as international chain brands. For example, the new theater built in the middle of Sanlitun, Beijing uses a Korean theater brand. One reason is that Hong Kong and Korean investors sometimes agree to disguise international capital under the name of domestic capital through an intermediary, whereas European and American investors always hesitate to make such a suspicious deal. For instance, Warner has stopped expanding its business in China for years. But European and American giants are just waiting for new policies that will offer better opportunities. In the long run, more than half of the Chinese theaters will be controlled by American capital in the future.

Most domestic giants are tightly integrated with the reals state industry. Most noticeable is Wanda’s general success. They manage to cover almost all the new development zones which didn’t exist in the formal cultural map of China. In big cities, these development zones have hundreds of thousands population. Moreover, the residents are mainly young, white-collars, (Blue-collars don’t buy houses. Mid-age white-collars tend to choose better developed neighborhood, and they don’t go to cinema.) such as the North District in Kunming.

Broadway Cinematheque MOMA, Beijing

Another remarkable theater development is the establishment of the Film Culture Center (Broadway Cinematheque MOMA) by Anle on the second ring road of Beijing. This is an isolated incident and its uniqueness is worth careful analysis and expectation.

Some theater businessmen study the mode of film history again and again, and hope to apply it to their own cinema, but it is too difficult to realize in practice. Moreover, commercial blockbusters are still profitable at the moment (the payback period for new theaters is about 3 years, hardware deprecation is about 7 to 8 years, real estate contracts last about 10 years in general). There’s no need for business to take the risk to start a new path.

But since theaters have such high returns, and the ready-made experience is so attractive, investment in theaters are expected to continue to increase. How much is the room for growth? It depends on the community on the one hand, and programing on the other hand. Because of the shortage of theaters in the past 20 years, and the commercial operation mode for blockbusters in the past 10 years, investors and audiences have forgotten about the lack of programs. American blockbusters saturated the market several years ago, which widened the gap between blockbusters shown in China. Now there are only two or three super blockbusters each year. I’m afraid that domestic blockbusters will also reach its saturation sometime in the future. By that time, we merely have two or three films a year in a real sense.

The scarcity of programming, in my own anticipation, will result a considerable percentage of empty seats in new cinemas in three years. This percentage will reach an unacceptable peak in five or six years, and the development will start to reverse, such as converting cinemas into billiard halls.

Art cinema, which has been criticized as impossible to form, will be realized independent from the will of scholars and intellectuals, but on the reality of the high rate of empty cinema seats. Some cinemas will have to depend on blockbusters to make money, others will rely on cultural activities and artworks to survive. The relation between the two will probably be balanced and harmonious by the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Republic, if we can keep on developing “normally” in the next ten years.

Contemporary art has passed the Old Summer Palace period and is now in the 798 period. The polarization within the film industry means that film as entertainment can appear in the cheapest form, such as in parodies of big movies, or in the most expansive form. So it is very abnormal for film as culture or art to be always in the low-end state.

Anle’s Film Cultural Centre that started to operate this year would probably contribute to the elevation of film as an art form. Perhaps it’s just a beginning; perhaps policy and other investors would follow up in three or five years. Hopefully Anle’s experiment will survive until that point.

V. Ten Years of Independence

Spring Fever (dir. Lou Ye)

Among different ways of counting independent films, if we see the grassroots video movement as its starting point, this is exactly its tenth year of existence. That is to say it is not the same age as the Republic, but the same age as the new century.

How can I describe to you those films that you’ve never seen, my dear audience?

Our cultural map is the same as our elections. It’s a 99% vs. 1% relationship. How can I explain that this 1% is not self-marginalized?

So as a writer, what I should do is to arouse your curiosity. That’s all I can do. If you are interested, you can find details online. As for the must-see works, you can watch them at different independent film festivals. If you don’t want to travel beyond your own city, please wait for the travelling shows to arrive in your place.

I personally consider them to be among the best part of contemporary Chinese culture, and the only valuable thing in Chinese cinema.

I’ll list three narrative films and three documentaries here, as well as three informational websites.

Spring Fever, dir. Lou Ye: He loves her loves him loves her loves him …
Bride, dir. Zhang Ming: An old cow eating tender grass (i.e. old man marries a young woman).
Good Cats, dir. Ying Liang: Catching mice can make you rich.
Petition, dir. Zhao Liang: Hasn’t the asylum policy been canceled?
Wheat Harvest, dir. Xu Tong: About a goddess.
Buried, dir. Wang Libo: About the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake

www.fanhall.cn (editor’s note 4/5/10: Fanhall’s site has been shut down)
www.yunfest.org
www.chinaiff.org

Zhang Xianmin
December 20, 2009

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Translation by Yuqian Yan

II. Long Live Capital: Non-stop Financing

Red Cliff (dir. John Woo)

The highest level of capital operations, where form and power converge, is to stack stars. The strategy is to stretch the shooting period so that new capital can be accumulated throughout the entire shooting and post-production period, new stars can keep on joining the film during the entire shooting period, the film can be revised over and over again to satisfy new investors, and new plotlines can be added to accommodate newly joined starts. Red Cliff is the first film that is close to this strategy. Its shooting period was so long that they had to make the film into two parts otherwise there would be no chance to make any money. But the version released in the States only has one part.

In 2009, apart from Founding of the Republic, another prominent example of commercial blockbusters using such open strategy during production is Bodyguards and Assassins. Even after the shooting was started, it continued to attract huge capital and film starts from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is the third stage of financing.

The first stage is that traditionally one film only has one definite copyright owner. The second stage is comprehensive financing, but the ownership has already been divided before the shooting starts. We are now on the third stage, where ownership division and profit share probably will not be determined until distribution.

This requires skill to pull off, and certainly increases the instability of work, the so-called “experiencing the excitement of one’s heartbeat.” Last year, audiences didn’t like John Woo’s film to be released in two parts, so this year, I assume that Peter Chan won’t take the risk to endlessly extend the shooting period or frequently change the plan for Bodyguards and Assassins. Some mainland Chinese TV institute invested huge money in the film. Audiences can count how many starts appear for only several seconds.

III. To be Listed on the Market

Another high-end of capital operation is the listing of Huayi Brothers Media Group on the market. Although the company’s performance hasn’t been very stable since the listing, it temporarily revitalized the capital market. Businessmen from Zhejiang who were formally turned down by the coal market in Shanxi seem to enjoy spreading the news of Huayi’s performance more than making a fortune themselves. It’s rather similar to the situation in 2008 when a cultural company in Taiyuan (the capital of Shanxi province) organized coal mine owners to massively purchase art works from the 798 art district in Beijing for cultural purposes.

Private investment in film production can also be roughly divided into three steps. The first step was the participation of local brands or enterprises through advertising, such as water pipe commercials for gunfighting films, Hainan real estate investment commercials for art films set on the beach. This also marked the beginning of the collapse of the big studio system. The phase when private investors insisted on their status as the exclusive copyright owner of films ended in 1995. Nowadays, no one does that any more except for the purpose of promoting an actress, and these kind of investors typically retire after their first film.

The second step is seeking cooperation. Everyone, including CEPA, is talking about overseas financing. The prevalence of overseas capital and money-laundering means that capital will follow abroad before it circles back. This kind of investor normally makes two to four films. The first one might be a small production, just to see how deep the water is. Once they get enough investment to test the water, they’ll cautiously assess the chance of losing money. This phase is still going on. This is a process of transforming hot money into calm decisions.

The third step appears to be the combination of “Confucian merchants” and “MBAs”. Financial experts rich in cultural capital enjoy great popularity these days. Although counterfeit experts are unavoidable, there are also real MBAs, or PhDs from the States, or intellectuals from the 80s. These people intend to work in the industry for ten years or half of their life, and aim to accumulate as least twenty, or even fifty film titles with their name listed as partial copyright owners.

The landmark event of two years ago was the super-entrepreneur Dong Ping’s transfer of his entire assets and withdrawal from the film industry. This year’s climax is Huayi’s listing on the market.

There are two obvious psychological effects about the listing.

Ning Hao (director of Crazy Stone)

The first is to buy at a cheap price. Everyone is looking for rising box office stars like Ning Hao. Typical traditional investors are still expecting him to make a profitable film. Others reply on such contract and copyrights to raise the price tag for shares or asset transfers. What investors are discussing this year is that such people can make the profit ratio curve of their company’s annual report look more pleasing than a beach girl.

Secondly, many people, including those investors who were cheated through money laundering, start to consider film as something that can make them a shareholder. Meanwhile, financial and private investors are interested in investing in several major film companies, comparable to buying shares at a high price.

Such beliefs by investors mark an end to primitive methods of capital accumulation in the film industry. It has been twenty years, a whole generation, since the late ’80s when private capital first entered the Chinese film industry, which means that in several years, the red third generation and rich second generation will have a greater say in film. Nowadays, if a loser still has a pair of pants left, there’s no complete victory for the winner. On the other hand, even the poor won’t be satisfied if the winner does not defeat others completely. Take a look at which film has the longest queue, and you’ll know what I mean.

Tomorrow, Part Three: New Theaters vs. The New Grassroots Movement

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