China-Underground

In Harbord’s analysis, four discourses operate within the boundaries of film festivals,

The four discourses have been effectively interwoven into the ensemble of film festivals and, evidently, the media coverage and the flow of capital have accelerated the interaction between each other. More importantly, the tendency is that film is handled as merely another type of product.
Film festivals, like film art itself, have always embodied the conflicting interests—“commerce versus art, the worthy versus glamour”—which “reproduces the assumption of an historical division between economics and culture, between everyday life and art”.
On the one hand, as Harbord notes,

On the other hand, “the importance of the festival in terms of the value of film is that the early phase of exhibition secures…the value of the text as product” (69). That is to say, the comparatively enclaved admission to festivals, rather than aiming to isolate the film from everyday experience and delineate the border between art world and popular culture, has instead confirmed those films’ value as luxury goods, which will be realized in later stages of distributing and circulating.
Based on Arjun Appudurai’s argument on five signs of a register of symbolic value , Harbord’s supposition is that the relation between these five elements is accumulative. If a film has won a prize, then “it is likely that it contains a level of semiotic virtuosity thus requiring specialized knowledge at the point of reception”, finally “the accumulative value of each of these phases is the conferring of value on the consumer” (69).
Reports about festivals normally focus on the celebrities, the controversial issues and rumors, “the making of” process and personal experience as told by filmmakers or actors in the interviews, and the indispensable ingredients: a corpus of film reviews. It contrasts with the less covered dimension of festivals—the economic level—the deals that have been made, the health of the market, predictions on sales and box-office performance of a film and so on.
Therefore, the myth of film festivals lies essentially in the imbalance between the four discourses. Whilst the journalism and tourism discourses have romantized the image of festivals, the business discourse and the “mythologies of commodity flow” has not attained equivalent attention from the public. However, the situation cannot obscure the fact that the degree of commercialization of film festivals is gradually intensified. The parallel routes with the film market on one side and the aesthetic evaluation on the other finally have to converge in a direction leading to their financial performance: the success of a film has also to be corroborated by its box-office revenues.
     The organization of festivals, based on a full understanding of the interaction between the four discourses, thus “represents a management of cultural resources in the divisions and demarcations of spheres: of the market, exhibition venues, the criteria of entry, the categories of award and the press office” (Harbord, 70). It is on the “criteria of entry” and festival programming that I will elaborate on in the following part.

Some dull statistic figures released by the committee of Cannes Film Festival 2005 have promised an exciting prospect of the long-standing cultural event. In 2004, for the first time there were more than one thousand films—1325 films were submitted from 85 countries. This year (2005), the figure rises by 16.2%—1540 feature films from 97 different countries (2003: 908; 2002: 939; 2001: 854; in 2000: 681). Compared to 2002 (939 FF), that is an increase of 64%; and compared to 2000 (681 FF), an increase of 126%. The figures have doubled in the last five years.
At the same time, the climbing number of entries, while symbolizing Cannes’ indisputable status among festivals, also indicates challenges on the part of the filmmakers. It is necessary to take the preliminary selection process of Cannes for instance. Among more than one thousands films submitted, only about 50 features and 30 short films will be included in the four categories of Official Selection. Patricia Thomson once unveiled part of the process: a U.S. scout for the indie-friendly Directors Fortnight prescreened approximately 100 submissions in New York, plus 70 tapes sent directly to Paris. She shortlisted them to 4, and then passed them on to the then-Fortnight director Francois de Silva for a final decision. Furthermore, Cannes Official Selection topper Thierry Fremaux works closely with two small committees to review French and international films and then determine their appropriate sections. Although Fremaux stresses they treat each one of the 850 features with respect, the final say remains his. In a later stage the award decision will be made by the official jury, and the jury president plays the central role (Thomson, par. 6-9).
No wonder that Patricia Thomson has admitted that “the college admissions process is a cakewalk compared to the nerve-wracking wait at film festival application time” (par.1). In her overview of the scene behind the curtain of major film festivals, Thomson has concluded that while the North American events “favor a squadron of programmers and a more porous structure, with selectors having input in multiple sections and collaborating under one roof”, festivals in Europe “tend to have autonomous sections with separate artistic directors who confer with selection committees” (par.3).
Another dimension of the selection process in film festivals is the relation between those entries and their represented countries and regions. Also with Cannes, it is not difficult to find out that in the 2005 festival there “seems to be a strong Asian and Latin-American presence”. Fremaux explains,

Fremaux’s comment is also reminiscent of the “sweet” memory between Chinese cinema and Cannes. Before Zhang Yimou’s break up with Cannes, together with Chen Kaige they witnessed the trajectories of the “emergence” of the Fifth Generation Cinemas in the eyes of the world.
Film festivals have become crucial to the formation of canonical works in national cinema. The selection process of film festivals, despite the varieties in practices, shares “some of the attributes of, without being synonymous with, the processes of inclusion in and exclusion from film canons” (Czach, 78).
The establishing of film canons and exclusion of a film revolve around a series of mechanisms. In her 1985 article“The Politics of Film Canons”, Janet Staiger has examined and clarified major aspects of the process and rationale involved. Among the most important processes are critical attention, film scholarship, and inclusion in film histories. Besides, she outlines how a "politics of selection" engages with various discourses of value, art, and exemplary works to inform decisions related to canon formation. Those various discourses remind us of the four discourses at film festivals. Hence Liz Czach is right in concluding that “selection decisions made regarding the canon sometimes correspond strongly with the kind of evaluative judgments made in programming” (79).
Nevertheless, as the canon-makers and canon-analyzers may hold conflicting opinions when it comes to certain films, the question of what films should be included and excluded has foregrounded the multilayeredness of the underlying discourses and the fluid politics of selection criteria. The selection criteria of film festivals are not permanent. Certain adjustments are made from year to year. This said, the legitimacy of film canonization and the authority of taste-makers cannot be arbitrarily undermined by neglecting the solid, durable aspects, the specific historic conditions of this cultural process. Therefore, “despite the problematic nature of film canons and their exclusionary politics, they can still be an important means to value (as well as evaluate) a national cinema” (Czach, 80). To enter for film festivals, especially to be included in the competition section at high-profile festivals, proves to be an effective way to promote and consolidate national cinema.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, there are multiple forms of capital, not only the one with material exchange, but also cultural and symbolic capital. For Bourdieu, cultural value is created by society, or, more precisely, by the agents in the “field” where the artist operates. In his canonizing process, cultural value is the product of a social apparatus (academies and academic publications, museums, etc.) having the power to distinguish between the better and the lesser, ending in the school system as the list of works that are in the textbooks.
Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, Liz Czach has employed the term “critical capital” to especially “refer to the value that a film accrues through its success in the festival circuit”. She states that, “through approval of the tastemakers—festival programmers and critics—the film attains a level of distinction above its unselected peers” and consequently has more promise to “find a place in the history” of national cinema as part of canons. In addition to the fact that the critical capital may not necessarily be “translated into box-office gold”, it depends, to some extent, on “the status of the festivals in which it is screened, the critics who review it, and the responses it receives”. Furthermore, as indicated by Czach, a film’s placement in various categories of a prestigious film festival will also weigh much in critical capital. For example at Toronto International Film Festival, the Opening Night Gala, Special Presentation and Masters are regarded hierarchally higher than sections like Planet Africa and Perspective Canada (82).
When it comes to the 58th Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Three Times (Zui Hao De Shiguang), Johnnie To’s Election (Hei Shehui) and Wang Xiaoshuai’s Shanghai Dreams (Qing Hong) have been included in Feature Films Competition, the prime slot of this festival. Moreover, John Woo is chosen as member of the Competition Jury while Edward Yang the president of Cinefondation’s Jury.
Hou, To and Wang’s nomination has corroborated Fremaux’s statement that we should talk about Asian (in our case, Chinese) cinema “in terms of confirmation”. Meanwhile, these three directors’ inclusion also helps to map out the present filmmaking scenario in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China. For film veterans as Hou and To, their nominated works—an art film and an action movie respectively—not only showcase their own stylistic strength, but also have represented the best in the eyes of the selection committee among the last-twelve-months’ local productions.
Since coming back from Berlin with Silver Bear in 2001, Wang Xiaoshuai has already been acclaimed as one of the potential auteurs in the new generation’s Chinese cinema. Wang is not stranger to Cannes either—his So Close To Paradise (Biandan Guniang, 1998) and the Drifters (Er’Di, 2003) were chosen by Cannes but were both placed in the category of Un Certain Regard. This time, his nomination not only indicates a new chapter in his professional career, but also contributes to the accruement of critical capital for the Sixth Generation as a whole. It is said that besides Wang Xiaoshuai, Zhang Yang and Zhang Yuan, also leading filmmakers of the Six Generation Cinema, have applied for Cannes’ competition section. While all three directors claimed it was a coincidence, the media still considered their gesture to be a collective maneuver (of the Sixth Generation) marching towards Cannes. Based on their previous performance at film festivals, critics and distributors alike paid much attention to these young directors’ works even before the actual shooting took place. Judging from the flow of the critical capital, the time has come to talk about the Sixth Generation Cinema in terms of confirmation rather than its emergence.
However, the heat of nomination list also reminds of the glamour of the Fifth Generation Cinema worldwide. Before delving into the depth of the new generation’s cinematic world, it is necessary to have a retrospect of their predecessors’ works, which first exploded onto the terrain of world cinema through renowned film festivals.

Arjun Appudurai identifies five signs of a register of symbolic value. First, the acquisition of prizes; second, a complexity of acquisition, for example through managed scarcity; third, semiotic virtuosity, a product that signals complex social messages; fourth, specialized knowledge is a prerequisite for “appropriate” consumption; and fifth, a high degree of linkage in consuming the goods to the body or personality. See J. Harbord, 69.

Statistics according to the press kit released by the 58th Cannes Film Festival’s official webpage < http://www.festival-cannes.fr/>. FF represents Feature Film.

See Pierre Bourdieu’s work, Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice ,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China is also known as Major China.

See relevant news reports on Chinese films at Cannes at the website of Sina (in Chinese) < http://ent.sina.com.cn/x/2005-04-21/1055708529.html >