China-Underground

The Fifth Generation Cinema and Its Cross-Cultural Interpretation
2.1 The Rise of the Fifth Generation Cinema and Chinese Film Canons
2.1.1 A New Era

In his retrospect of the development of Chinese Film Studies in the West, Chinese film scholar Zhang Yingjin recounts that, “as recently as the early 1980s, Chinese cinema barely constituted an academic subject in the West. A number of events in the mid-1980s, however, decisively contributed to its rise” (Zhang, 43). Undoubtedly, one of the “events” referred to by Zhang was the Fifth Generation filmmakers’ “debut” in the world. The rise of Chinese Film Studies, to a large extent, was accelerated by the “long time in coming and yet entirely unexpected” excitement the Fifth Generation Cinema ignited outside China (Silbergeld, 7).
In 1985, Yellow Earth was shown at the 9th Hong Kong International Film Festival and won unprecedented enthusiasm despite its cold reception in mainland China. However, Hong Kong International Film Festival turned out to be just the first stop of the “Journey of Festivals” for the Fifth Generation. People’s fervor for Yellow Earth was repeated later at the Edinburgh and Locarno festivals. This film signaled “that Chinese cinema came of age” (Rayns, 1). Chen Kaige, as the groundbreaker of his peers, witnessed the advent of an era inaugurated by the Fifth Generation, with 1985 the starting point.
While it is true that some films by the Fifth Generation have been banned because they are exhibited overseas without official approval, it is never coincidence that many works, like Yellow Earth, only with rave reviews at international film festivals could they be shown and reach much wider audience in China. Furthermore, festival selection and award have undeniably enhanced the possibility of those highly acclaimed films to be included as Chinese or even the world’s canonical works.

2.1.2 Chinese Film Canons and Critical Capital

As mentioned in the first chapter, Liz Czach’s theory of “critical capital” is quite relevant in examining the achievements of the Fifth Generation Cinema at international film festivals.
According to Czach,

In addition, as indicated in the first chapter, the placement in various sections of the festival structure will also contribute differently to the accruement of critical capital. For instance, a film placed in the competition section at a high-profile film festival would draw more critical attention than those in the non-competition categories.
One of the leading Fifth Generation directors who could boast of critical capital is Zhang Yimou; his prize profile reads definitely enviable. After Red Sorghum’s (Hong Gaoliang, 1987) Golden Bear, Zhang’s Ju Dou (1990) won Luis Buñuel Special Award in 1990’s Cannes Film Festival. In 1991, Zhang’s Raise the Red Lantern (Dahong denglong gaogao gua) earned him the Silver Lion in Venice Film Festival and The Story of Qiu Ju (Qiu Ju da guansi, 1992) finally brought him the Golden Lion. Meanwhile, both Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern were nominated the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Nevertheless, it seems that from Red Sorghum to Raise the Red Lantern, the applause for these films from the West sounds decisively louder than the shout of dissonance they received at home. Before elaborating on this topic in the subsequent section, taking another perspective, we will find out that such contrast to some extent results from the particular politics of canonizing films in China.
Janet Staiger’s illuminating article The Politics of Film Canons (1985)points out that the choices of aesthetic works are often interest-laden and “if selections seem natural, inherent, universal or timeless (and thus socially good), it may well be that a number of individuals’ interest has been determined by similar hegemonic cultural needs and institutions” (Staiger, 10). If we approach Staiger’s assertion within the context of Chinese cultural scenario, I suggest that from the early stage of the socialist film industry, the selection and evaluation of Chinese film canons have best embodied the predominance of the official cultural needs and institutions. Socialist and nationalist ideology constitutes the guideline for the canonization of Chinese films.
As reflection, in a symposium on “Rewriting Chinese Film History” held in Beijing, some Chinese film scholars and critics have pointed out that the historiography of Chinese cinema has been overshadowed—or even during periods overwhelmingly dominated—by the orthodox ideology and mainstream discourse. Therefore, in retrospect of the centennial trajectory of Chinese cinema , we will realize that because of their depoliticized implication or even incompatibility with the authoritarian ideology, some film styles, genres and certain evolving stages have been unavoidably marginalized and neglected. Others have not been fully explored or remained totally unknown in Chinese film history. Nowadays a considerable number of Chinese film canons, as reflected in official publishing and media, are mainstream features and social melodramas, especially “Red (revolutionary) Classics”, that eulogize the Party’s achievements and heroic figures from anti-imperialism and revolutionary wars to socialism development in the new era.
Nevertheless, the Fifth Generation’s courage to express the inexpressible has represented the regenerating force against the stagnant cultural scenario in the post-Mao era. Herrnstein Smith argues,

The Fifth Generation filmmaking has an impact on the existing rationales for the canonization of films. Importantly, film festival selection has constituted a crucial optional value system for the canonization of Chinese cinema, although “the politics of power” still permeate the criteria (Staiger’s term).
Naturally, the formation of film canons is not a rigid process following permanent principles. It also needs to be revigorated from time to time. As film critic Adrian Martin stated in a discussion of film canons, the status of canonical work is not absolute because the basic rule of canon formation is consensus. Therefore he called for “a dynamic and constant historic revision of canons” and was eager for a radically “crazy new canon” (par.13). Martin’s attitude draws attention to the ever more polemic process of the establishment of film canons in this era of globalization.
However, with the present situation that “a canon is proposed, put up by a magazine, a museum, a Festival, a Cinémathèque, or a national Film Institute” (Martin, par. 13), film festival still plays an essential part in the canonization of films. As Staiger outlines, the canon formation in film history involves the politics of admission, of selection and of academy. Film festivals function in an amazing way that integrates different layers of politics and resembles canon-formation especially on the level of selection procedures. Despite that Liz Czach has acknowledged film festival’s limitation in establishing film canons and pointed out it’s just one part of a much complex procedure, still she indicates, “…as the stature of the festival increases, the weight of that one factor can have significant bearing on a film’s life” (82), therefore, the building up of critical capital of a certain film through festivals is still crucial to its inclusion in the film canons.

2.2 Ethnographic Chinese Cinema and the Western Gaze
2.2.1 A Generation in Dilemma

The Fifth Generation directors are caught up in a two-dimensional contradiction. First of all, the profound contradiction originated from the aforementioned cultural-reflection movement. It on the one hand aimed to sweep the obstacles to modernization by disapproving traditional Chinese culture; on the other hand, it depended on the roots-searching to revisit the origins of national culture.
Another dimension of the contradiction lies in the confronting forces between the homogenizing official discourse vis-à-vis anti-establishment Western ideologies in the context of globalization. While rebellious on the domestic front, the Fifth Generation has “played an unexpected role in promoting a new kind of cultural nationalism”. This new role makes them “complicit” (as the eager collaborator with transnational capitalism) in the international arena (Zhang, 207).
These paradoxes overlap and their interplay are decisively germane to our further scrutinizing of the Fifth Generation Cinema vis-à-vis the Western gaze.

2.2.2 Autoethnography, the Oriental’s Orientalism and the Flourishing of Ethnographic Film

In Paul Willemen’s argument of Third World Cinema, he clarifies that in the Third World, three options are available to Third World intellectuals and artists. First, “to identify with the dominant and dominating culture, which is easy for the metropolitan intelligentsia”; second, “to develop the antagonistic sense of national identity by seeking to reconnect with traditions that got lost or were displaced or distorted”; third, “particular aspects of some cultures are selected and elevated into essentialized symbols of the national identity: the local answer to imperialism’s stereotypes” (qtd. in Zhang, 221).
Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum registers the second option in Willemen’s agenda with its celebration of unrestricted vitality of Chinese people and against-Japanese imperialism subtext. Also in Red Sorghum it is observable that Zhang Yimou deployed the “ideology of body”—the ideology relishes the body full of “primitive passion” (Rey Chow’s term). It has poetically evoked Bahktin’s notion of carnival and Nietzschean celebration of Dionysian spirit and symbolized a nation demanding to be liberated from its own body.
Nonetheless, Willemen also recognizes that in his agenda “this [second] option presents considerable difficulties and dangers” in its “need to reinvent traditions, to conjure up an image of pre-colonial innocence and authenticity” of a society in nostalgia “which in fact never existed…” (qtd. in Zhang, 221). Overall, Red Sorghum, in Chen Xiaoming’s word, “marks both an end and a beginning”: it is an end to the critical mode of cultural reflection and the beginning of an exhibitionist mode of visualizing China (Chen, 228).
In his subsequent works Zhang Yimou began pursuing another set of “ideology of the body”. In Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lanterns, Zhang’s female characters, as observed by Wendy Larson, have progressively become submissive and gradually lost the power to defy the patriarchy order. Hence Larson comments that “the man’s world of Red Sorghum—a place of direction, earth, and power—has been replaced by the woman’s world of Red Lanterns [sic]—a place of games, rooms, and form”. In this way, “the alternative possibility of remasculinization through a strong body and a firm mind diminishes, while the conservative, orthodox power of the past increases” (qtd. in Zhang, 216). In the same vein, Rey Chow furthers her discussion by regarding Zhang’s treatment of female oppression as “a fetishization of women that can…be more accurately described as a self-exoticization through the tactics of visuality” (Chow, 148).
Consequently Zhang Yimou’s films have embodied the dangers that Willemen defines as inherent in the second option of his mapping. In Zhang’s later works we find the reinvented traditions and conjured-up images of the pre-colonial innocence—the dye mill, the blocking of the patriarch’s coffin forty-nine times in the funeral procession, the foot massage and the lightening of lanterns for concubines. In Willemen’s scenario, Zhang Yimou has swiftly moved from the second option to the third. Zhang’s strategic maneuver, in the first place, has contributed to the immediate popularity of ethnographic cinema in mainland China during the early 1990s. We shall come back to this topic later.
Secondly, according to Rey Chow, the invention of ethnic customs and practices should not be evaluated by their authenticity, but their mode of signification. Indeed Zhang’s ethnographic ingredients are not used “for themselves but for their collective, hallucinatory signification of ‘ethnicity’” (Chow, 143-4). Particularly, such “hallucinatory” or “seductive” power of the signification in Zhang Yimou’s films more relates to Western audience than the domestic audience.
Moreover Zhang Yimou’s gesture in Willemen’s notion represents “a specific ‘local answer’ or response to the ‘imperialism’s stereotypes’”. This response can be better understood as “autoethnography” in that “ it conscientiously seeks to exhibit all conceivable aspects of the ‘body’ and the embodied means of ethnic Chinese culture in exotic and often erotic forms”(Zhang, 208).
From Mary Louise Pratt’s differentiation between the two modes of “ethnographic” writings, it is clear that autoethnography, involving “partial collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the conqueror”, is itself an embodiment of the unbalanced power structure with the West in domination. (222).
In her study, Rey Chow takes a positive view regarding autoethnography. She observes that Zhang Yimou is confronted with the inherent contradiction, “the double gaze of the Chinese security state and the world’s, especially the West’s, orientalism” (Chow, 170). Therefore the exhibitionism of Zhang’s works, as a response to the double gaze, on the one hand returns the gaze of the official surveillance. On the other hand, “the ‘ethnicity’—‘Chineseness’—of Zhang’s films is also the sign of cross-cultural commodity fetishism, a production of value between cultures”. In this way, Zhang “is showing a ‘China’ that is at one subalternized and exoticised by the West” and “returns the gaze of orientalist surveillance, a gaze that demands of non-Western peoples mythical pictures and stories to which convenient labels of otherness such as ‘China’, ‘India’, ‘Africa’, and so forth can be affixed ” (Chow,170-171).
Chow advances her theory by regarding Zhang Yimou’s exhibitionist self-display as “a critique of the voyeurism of orientalism itself”. This exhibitionism is called “the Oriental’s orientalism”. It turns “the remnants of orientalism into elements of a new ethnography…this ethnography accepts the historical fact of orientalism and performs a critique (i.e. evaluation) of it by staging and parodying orientalism’s politics of visuality”. Moreover, “the Oriental’s orientalism is first and foremost a demonstration—the display of a tactic” (Chow, 171).
Nevertheless, while acknowledging that Zhang Yimou has deployed the “exhibitionism” or “fetishization” in his “visual ethnography”, some critics differ from Rey Chow in the interpretation of Zhang’s “politics of visuality” and his intention of “to-be-looked-at-ness”.
Dai Jinhua and Zhang Yingjin contend that Zhang Yimou, instead of returning the gaze, has internalized the gaze of Western culture. In his self-autoethnography, Zhang Yimou has displayed the willing compliance with rather than the tactic against the Orientalist’s gaze. It is further pointed out that, because securing foreign investment for future projects through successful appearances at Western film festivals have become the priority, the Fifth Generation filmmakers have constructed their filmic narratives in accordance with the Western expectations and conventions, thereby “simultaneously sustaining and creating a national culture predicated on allegorical depth and superficial pretense”(Marchetti, par25).
Here we shall return to the discussion of the flourishing of ethnographic cinema, which refers to a new type of Chinese films between the late 1980s to mid-1990s. Even though they don’t necessarily emulate Zhang Yimou, many Chinese directors “would compete in restaging and reinventing exotic, erotic rituals and other ethnic cultural elements” (Zhang, 229). Such a “competition” to great extent was triggered by the Western interest or demand for such a genre. Film festivals, as the taste-maker, in turn provide the platform for this trend of ethnography to circulate. Hence Dai Jinhua laments that, “winning such prizes has become a prerequisite for film making; Western culture, artistic tastes, and production standards related to international film festivals now determine our purely national films” (qtd. in Zhang 229).
As clarified by Zhang Yingjin, directors of ethnographic films are fully aware that in order to make the palatable visual feast to satisfy western expectation and conventions, they have to include “formulaic but nonetheless essential or magic ingredients” as such:

Indeed, ethnographic elements such as rituals, folk custom, provincial landscapes and narrative formulae pervade in films from Wang Jin’s Widow Village (Guafu Cun, 1988) and Women Flowers (Nüren Hua, 1994), Teng Wenji’s Ballad of the Yellow River (Huanghe Yao, 1989) to Huang Jianxin’s The Wooden Man’s Bride (Wu Kui, 1993), Zhou Xiaowen’s Ermo (Ermo, 1994), and He Ping’s Red Firecracker (Paoda Shuangdeng, 1994). Through the recreation and reorganization of these elements, ethnographic cinema was made on a reproducible basis. Dai Jinhua perceptively observes that, “when the narrative of history ceased to be a deconstructive retelling based on a (Chinese) reality, it became a (Western) postmodernist replication”. (50-9).
Ethnographic films take initiative in participating in “the marketing of consumable symbols of rural ‘Third World’ China through the reworking of images of regionalism, primitivism, and exoticism which have become paradigmatic and symptomatic of the Fifth Generation—and intrinsic to global conceptions and receptions of Chinese art cinema ”(Ciecko & Lu, 78). Images of a reconstructed “China” are consumed and circulated globally as cultural products.
I reserve my doubt for the Fifth Generation directors’ self-consciousness to deploy the Oriental’s orientalism as the demonstration so that to return the Gaze of the West. Meanwhile, I cannot totally embrace Dai Jinhua’s opinion that those filmmakers have obsequiously surrendered to the West in their victimizing China for international consumption. Rey Chow’s argument points out that the “to-be-looked-at-ness” of the non-Western culture still can register resistance. I’d rather consider the mutual relationship an undergoing, negotiating process between the local and the global, between the West and the non-West. Therefore, ethnographic cinema can be regarded as the product of the uneven power structure of the West vis-à-vis China and the global capital vis-à-vis local film industry. In the global film traffic, such an imbalance may subject to change. I will explore this issue in later section.
Insomuch as “Western expectations and conventions” are concerned, western film festivals—“the aesthetic preference of film-festival judges”—best represented the “western cultural perspective” and taste. I would like to proceed with our discussion to examine the festival-goers and the Western Gaze. Especially, to position the Fifth Generation filmmaking within the territory of global image consumption may offer us a fresh perspective to examine the aforementioned process of cross-cultural exchanges.

2.3 Festival-Goers, Festival Circuit and the Turn of the Fifth Generation
2.3.1 Festival-Goers

Janet Harbord argues there are at least four discourses that are prevalent in the festival circuit. As she suggests, “the various discourses of the festival operate as open and closed vectors to the circulation of knowledge about film, and thus are productive of particular cultural values that secure routes of distribution and exhibition” (87). To understand the Western cultural perspective as reflected in the festival circuit, however, entails an examination of the interplay between the diverse discourses in flux. We shall approach the “Western Gaze” on New Chinese Cinema at first from the perspective of festival-goers: not only the ordinary audience or cinephiles, but also the film critics and scholars who rely on their expertise to evaluate film works.
According to Bill Nichols, western festival-goers, though having “the potential to include many social groupings for which additional modifications would need to be made”, are typically “white, middle-class” like himself. Also included are “commentators for whom these issues of crosscultural reading are freighted with specific historical (colonial and postcolonial) hazards”. Nichols relates festival-goers to anthropological fieldworkers or tourists in that they are “invited to submerge…in an experience of difference”, the “experience of the new and unexpected itself”. Indeed, for the festival-goers, international film festival “affords an ideal opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of film’s imaginary signifiers” in the discovery of “new voices and visions”. The incitement lies in the fact that “there is a reverie in the fascination with the strange, an abiding pleasure in the recognition of differences that persists beyond the moment” (1994a:17-21).
Meanwhile, Nichols is also perceptive to point out that, like the ethnographer, the festival-goers’ “pursuit of intimate knowledge and authenticity is illusory” because the native informants are ready to furnish evidence that will satisfy Western expectations. He thus believes,

2.3.2 Poetic/Political and the Western Taste

Bill Nichols stresses that there are two aspects from “a different culture” standing out in the festival literature which prove tempting to festival-goers: for one thing, the “artistic maturity” that will eventually place an emerging director in an international fraternity of auteurs; for another, “a distinctive national culture” that marks itself off from the dominant Hollywood styles and themes (1994a: 17). In the case of the Chinese cinema, nonetheless, worldwide acclaim for the “artistic maturity” of the Fifth Generation directors is intricately intertwined with the “distinctive national culture” they have depicted in their works.
We could learn from E.Ann.Kaplan that in terms of textual understanding, “for strangers, two fundamental reading strategies then present themselves: the aesthetic and the political” (qtd. in Nichols, 1994a: 19). Nichols has proposed that “the recovery of strangeness by means of induction into an international art cinema/film festival” will constitute “a new layer of audience, the film festival-goer”. This layer, formed in the exchange of festival discourses, supplements “an initially more local one”.
For the western festival-goers, the aesthetic dimension of the Fifth Generation Cinema has often been interpreted in terms such as “poetic”, “gorgeous” “epic” and “pictorial”, which reaffirms the beauty of visuality, the “superficial pretense” consciously pursued by directors like Zhang Yimou.
Meanwhile, the political dimension of these films is of more interest for the West. As Chen Xiaoming has asserted, “politics…has been the determining factor in the reconstruction of the image of ‘China’ in the West. Without the strategic employment of political codes, Chinese film would lose its cultural identity and consequently be denied international recognition”. In lots of internationally acclaimed films, including Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, “politics serves as the very identity of China, without which all the stories about human beings would lose their exotic appeal as representing an absolute Other”(230).
Furthermore, Chen Xiaoming has appropriately taken Zhang Yimou’s Shanghai Triad (Yao’a’yao, Yaodao Waipoqiao, 1995) for example. In Cannes Film Festival 1995, Shanghai Triad was awarded Technical Grand Prize, which was only a comforting gesture from the jury. Chen Xiaoming believes Zhang Yimou deviated from the “Western imaginary of China” in this movie, that is, it failed “because of its lack of distinctive political codes and features of oriental despotism”. On the one hand Chen Xiaoming shows his understanding that “political readings” of Chinese films “are not necessarily far-fetched misreadings insofar as the cultural imaginary of Oriental culture has always already inculcated an invisible, but omnipresent, nexus of absolute power and totalitarianism, which overshadows Zhang Yimou’s and others’ films” (229). On the other hand Chen Xiaoming concludes, in Zhang Yimou’s experiment “to create a new narrative style to portray the complex origins of history and the dense texture of everyday life”, the “stereotyped politics” had become “an insurmountable obstacle for contemporary Chinese cinema, an obstacle even Zhang Yimou could not overcome” (234-5).
Particularly, both western critics and audience cannot resist their curiosity towards the “back region” knowledge of the Fifth Generation Cinema especially when a given film is related to the Communist censorship. Their interest has been greatly aroused and sustained by the omnipresent media reports. In this respect, The Fifth Generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite (Lan Fengzheng, 1992) is a case in point. While thematically resembling the 1970s “scar literature” in its depiction of trauma of Cultural Revolution, The Blue Kite “yields little more than a well-conceived reproduction of the ‘China image’ in the Western cultural imaginary” (Chen, 230). A report from New York Film Festival in 1993 herein corroborated Chen’s observation. This New York Times article is titled “In China, Personal is Political”. By implicating The Blue Kite’s “political codes”, the review summarized,

Although the controversy around The Blue Kite at Tokyo International Film Festival endangered Tian Zhuangzhuang’s filmmaking career at home , however, this movie was warmly welcomed in international film festivals . Ironically, on the cover of the videotape of this film, which is distributed in Euro-America, it is strikingly written in red “The Film Is Banned in China”.
Peter Loehr, the founder of Imar (Yima) Productions, a joint venture dedicating to commercial films reflecting urban lifestyles, sarcastically states in an interview that three peculiar aspects of Chinese films fascinate the Western film festival the most: the impoverished village, gorgeous ancient costumes and banned movies. He admits that some oversea distributors even ask if they could claim a given film is “banned” in mainland China as a promotion strategy even though the film has obtained permit from censors.
The political vision, permeated with Western ideology and Eurocentrism, underscores the politics of festival selection. The direct result is a highly limited interpretation of Chinese films. The multiple possibilities to look at “China” have been reduced to a single vision. The “taste” promoted by the festival becomes a burden which, while shedding light on certain Chinese films, also eclipses a wider spectrum of national cinema productions. In 1990, film scholar/director Zheng Dongtian found it unfair that when the ethnographic film was favored in the western world, those focusing on China’s urban life remained obscure and theses new works keep being turned down when the festival agents come to China to select films. As recalled by Zheng, “some Western critics even frankly asked ‘Why did you make what we have already made?’” (qtd. in Zhang, 32).
Hence it is indeed necessary to raise the question Bill Nichols once asked,

2.3.3 The Turn of the Fifth Generation in Global Image Consumption

Dai Jinhua once pointed out that if the Fifth Generation directors still “wanted to keep a cultural foothold in art, evade the commercial tide and thus avoid the mainstream model”, the “narrow gateway”— to win “awards at important international film festivals” and henceforth “secure foreign investment, coproduction, or other forms of assistance”—became the sole practical option for them (Dai, 50).
Evolving from Dai’s point of view, we will find out that the Fifth Generation directors are enmeshed even deeper in the aforesaid contradictions taking into account the social and economic reality of the nineties’ and especially the new millennium’s China. Although Dai’s assertion sounds pertinent regarding the Fifth Generation’s early works, particularly the ethnographic films, she had the tendency to overemphasize the one-way influence of Western preference and failed to foresee Chinese filmmakers’ potential to interact with the global film market. To “evade the commercial tide” is definitely neither the actual situation of, nor an advisable strategy for Chinese cinema now.
Bill Nichols in his study of global image consumption has disclosed the process in which imaginary identities and virtual cultures are constructed in the global context and projected onto local products. Particularly, the international film festival circuit itself has become an integral part of the circulation and exchange of global image economy. Within the “global overlay” of festival context prevails the “dialectic of comprehension/miscomprehension, understanding/misunderstanding, recognition/misrecognition”. Nevertheless, more often “it is this dialectic itself and specific aspects of the interdependent, interpenetrating combination of localism and globalism that is misrecognized—particularly in those gestures that would lift veil of international circulation to rediscover local origins” (1994b:69).
Furthermore, based on the circulatory pattern that James Clifford suggests for tribal artifacts, Bill Nichols also proposes a rectangle for the representation of global film traffic. The four-zone rectangle has lent us a much panoramic view to perceive the position of national cinema in the global image consumption.
As asserted by Nichols, “though made locally, film production is always a site at which the global penetrates the local, the traditional, the national”. He hence points out that “Local films need not, however, be made with an eye toward escape from this global net of capital, technology, and style” (1994b:77).
In my opinion, it is of no further significance to contend whether Zhang Yimou’s early works and other ethnographic films are “selling out” the national culture of China and “Chineseness” in a submissive way. On the one hand it is indeed sad that certain so-called Chinese “art house” movies have been relegated to reproductions fashioned on the Western taste. However, autoethnography doesn’t inherently betray the local culture. On the other hand, as indicated by Nichols, local films shouldn’t escape from the voracious global market. To enter into international film festivals, however, cannot be simply perceived to be a forced choice to run away from the force of commercialization anymore. Rather, to bring films for festivals is a gesture to face the challenges from the international film market.
The sophisticated Western festival-goers’ taste may determine a Chinese film’s destiny in the international film circuit. However, Chinese directors also learned from their encounters with the Western Gaze how to participate in the cultural play and “give an eye” back to the “global net of capital, technology, and style”. Once the “rebellious” ringleaders of the Fifth Generation filmmakers, both Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige now seem to make a strategic turn to cope with the globalization in film world. Their recent mega-productions are no longer confined to the category of art films. Rather, people are inclined to consider Zhang Yimou’s Hero (Ying Xiong,) and House of Flying Daggers (Shimian Maifu, 2004) are fashioned after the unparalleled triumph of Ang Lee’s martial-art classic Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Wohu Canglong) in the West.
This May, Chen Kaige flew to Cannes 2005 in high profile with The Promise (Wu Ji, 2005), a 35-million-dollar period epic—the largest for any Chinese movie to date—assembling an all-star Asian cast. Interestingly enough, Chen’s destination in Cannes this time was an ancient French castle, where a costly promotional event was held and the 11-minute clip of his in-post-production film was shown to more than 100 distributors worldwide. Such a grand premiere at Cannes is also deemed unprecedented for Chinese films . Compared to the glory to win any award at Cannes, to sign the contracts with Weinstein Company and IDG New Media seems more to Chen Kaige’s heart content. Chen’s easiness with the festival competition, as expressed in interviews, is a kind of “post-film festival” attitude. It doesn’t indicate a disregard of festival selection, but rather the self-consciousness and maturity found in Chinese filmmakers when confronting the “global net”. Such poise closely relates to Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige’s international success and their established status in world cinema.
Despite the harsh criticism that the fad of martial-art epic among the Fifth Generation filmmakers is nothing more than the variation of ethnographic films, we should also realize that the critique of Oriental’s Orientalism has its limitations and we need to rethink our position and to evaluate the recent vogue from much diversified perspectives.
Indeed, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige’s martial-art/epic blockbusters, on the one hand cannot elude difficult questions such as “are these movies on a par with the art films that many of these industries used to make” and “are they genuine expressions of a distinct national culture, or just thinly localized knockoffs of the dominant Hollywood products” (Klein); on the other hand, I am inclined to think their strategic turn as market-savvy Zhang and Chen’s counterattack facing the threat from Hollywood mega-commercial films.
Most importantly, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, House of Flying Daggers and even Chen Kaige’s The Promise, as a new breed of national film with well-balanced local elements and global flavor, challenge the easy categorization of Asian films as either highbrow “art” or lowbrow “action” in the West. Whereas the Hollywood produce films primarily for its lucrative overseas audience, other national film industries have turned their eyes to the U.S. cinemas. The huge success of Hero and House of Flying Daggers in the U.S. film market may serve as a vivid example in this reverse trend of global image consumption.
Nevertheless, at Cannes Film Festival 2005, the glamour of Chen Kaige’s new film almost outshone the mainland Chinese competition entry Shanghai Dreams, a movie by Wang Xiaoshuai, a prominent Sixth Generation director.
Zheng Dongtian once mapped out the generations of New Chinese Cinema: at present except for the maestro of social melodrama Xie Jin, other Third Generation directors hardly have any new works. Meanwhile, only seven filmmakers of the Fourth Generation are still involved in filmmaking. When it comes to the Fifth Generation, there is a polarized trend in which some directors diverted to high-budget commercial films, and the others have retreated to the production of TV dramas. Despite the Fifth Generation’s considerable share in the domestic film market, the young filmmakers of the Sixth Generation who are committed to reflect Chinese reality, are the future leaders of Chinese filmmaking (Zheng). Like their predecessors, this new generation of Chinese filmmakers has also ignited interest of the world through series of victories at Western film festivals. However, from the production mode to the themes and subjects of their films, the Sixth Generation differs considerably from the previous generation. Not relying on the autoethnographic elements to gain their way to the West, this new generation’s films are still trapped in the circle of being misread. In their effort to continue the dialogue with the West, the Sixth Generation has a long way to go.

The symposium is part of the 11th Beijing Students Film Festival held in 2004.

It is commonly recognized that the first Chinese film—also a Peking opera film is MountDingjun (Dingjun Shan), shot in 1905 by the owner of a photo shop Ren Jingfeng. See relevant information at the website of Danwei < http://www.danwei.org/archives/001774.html >.

See the discussion (only Chinese) on Chinese films at Fanhall <http://www.fanhall.com/show.aspx?id=6155&cid=97>.

The Blue Kite, because of its investment from Japan and Hong Kong, was submitted to the 6th Tokyo International Film Festival as a Japanese film. As a result, when the jury declared the film had won awards, Chinese delegates decided to withdraw from the festival. Tian got serious punishment from the Film Bureau.

It won the prize of Best Director at Chicago International film festival and was selected in Director's Fortnight of Cannes Film Festival

See Augusta Palmer’s article on Chinese film industry, BIZ:Taming Of The Dragon: Part II, Two Approaches to China’s Film Market < http://www.indiewire.com/biz/biz_001208_ChinesePartII.html >

Refer to Figure 1.

See relevant reports on The Promise at the website of MonkeyPeaches <http://www.monkeypeaches.com/wuji.html>

The competition has become ever fiercer since 1995 the government decided to import ten overseas blockbusters (mainly Hollywood films) each year and promised to further open China’s film market after China’s entry into WTO.

Hero was premiered in the U.S. in August 2004 after Miramax had shelved it for two-years. For the first week of its release, Hero became the box-office number one with US $17,801,631. The first three days’ U.S. box-office revenue of House of Flying Daggers amounted to US$417,000, averagely higher than that of Hero.