China's Blockbusters: Selling Tickets and Whitewashing History

Kindly old Uncle Mao takes time out from the civil war to play with a couple of kids in a field full of flowers. A heartwarming image from The Founding of a Republic.

Apologies that Screening China has been a little quiet of late. I've been extremely busy with work at the Beijinger, a slew of freelance articles and some traveling. There are a couple of holidays coming up here in China, so I'm hoping I can use that time to do some catching up. I've got lots to post about!

To get things rolling again, here is an article I recently had published in The Diplomat, a current affairs magazine based in Japan covering the Asia and Pacific region. The piece is a look at China's recent state-sponsored blockbusters like Aftershock and Founding of a Republic, and the rampant protectionism the Chinese state maintains to help shore up the success of these locally-made studio films.

Visions of Taipei in Recent Commercial Taiwanese Cinema

Chang Chen in Chung Monghong's Parking (2008).

Taiwan has a great tradition of arthouse filmmaking, strongly influenced by European postwar modernism, stretching back to the 1980s, but it's heartening to see the more commercial end of the industry also undergoing a minor revival in recent years.

The locally-produced Cape No. 7 (director Wei Te-Sheng) became the second highest grossing film in the island's history in 2008, beaten only by Titanic. Unfortunately I haven't seen that film, but in the past few weeks I have watched two other recent products of Taiwan's commercial sector on DVD – Chung Monghong's Parking (2008) and Arvin Chen's Au Revoir Taipei (2010), both part of what the Hollywood Reporter calls “the trend of new Taiwan films... [that] weave a circus of zany figures into a tapestry of multistranded stories.”

Aftershock: Remaking History as a Family Affair

Xu Fan as Li Yuanni, shortly after the Tangshan earthquake hits in Feng Xiaogang's "Aftershock."

Recent history is not a realm China's commercial filmmakers are generally too keen to touch. It's hard to depict the witch hunts and famines of the 1950s, the widespread brutality of the Cultural Revolution, or even the social upheavals of the 1980s without casting aspersions on party rule, and casting those kinds of aspersions is not something you do if you want to remain within China's state sanctioned film industry. As far as I'm aware, Feng Xiaogang's new blockbuster Aftershock (Tangshan dadizhen, literally “Tangshan Big Earthquake”) is the first Chinese feature to look at one of the 20th century's worst natural disasters, the 7.8 magnitude quake in 1976 that flattened the northern city of Tangshan and officially killed 242,000 people.

Gong Li & a Sixth Generation Love-in at Beijing's BC MOMA

Gong Li in her most recent film Shanghai, in which she co-starred with John Cusak.

 While Feng Xiaogang's IMAX blockbuster Aftershock (Tangshen da dizheng) was opening on 3,500 screen across China last Thursday (July 22), Beijing's BC MOMA cinema was hosting a big night of its own. Gong Li was spotted shooting outside and several star directorial talents – including Jia Zhangke – were on hand for the Beijing premiere of Wang Xiaoshuai's Chongqing Blues (Rizhao Chongqing).

The Tribulations of Chinese Rural Life: Huang Mei's The Village Elementary

While many things have improved in the People's Republic since the death of Mao in 1976, access to public education for the poor isn't one of them. I recently saw The Village Elementary, a documentary by Huang Mei, that delves into this issue with a portrait of life in a tiny village primary school in Gansu Province, west China. This arid, mountainous region features breathtaking  scenery, but harbours villages so impoverished its hard to believe they exist in the same nation as the glittering skylines of modern cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

From the Dark Side of Economic Success: Zhao Liang's Petition and Guo Xiaolu's Once Upon a Time Proletarian

From the latest issue of the Australian art magazine RealTime.

“Bring down corruption, give me my human rights!” That’s the plaintive cry heard near the beginning of Zhao Liang’s film Petition (pictured left), a disturbing look at the brutality, violence and intimidation surrounding those seeking justice in contemporary China. Guo Xiaolu’s Once Upon a Time Proletarian similarly continues the Chinese independent documentary tradition of probing what lies behind the glittering facades of China’s economic success. Both films appeared at the recent Hong Kong International Film Festival, the only place in the People’s Republic where such critical works can play at such high profile events.

A Black, Absurdist Take on Modern China: Zhao Dayong’s The High Life

Recently I had the opportunity to see Zhao Dayong’s The High Life (pictured left) on DVD, my second viewing after a screening at the Hong Kong International Film Festival back in April, where the film scooped the FIRPRESCI Critics’ Jury Prize and the Silver Award in the Asian Digital Competition. I’d enjoyed the film in Hong Kong, but as so often happens at festivals there was little time to reflect on it before it was swept away by the sights and sounds of another half dozen movies in the days following. Happily, my positive impression of the film was only reinforced by a second viewing on DVD.

A Whole Other Way of Being: Yang Rui’s Crossing the Mountain

On May 15 I attended the Beijing debut of Yang Rui's first dramatic feature, the strange, experimental  Crossing the Mountain, screened as part of BC MOMA's ongoing “Young Chinese Filmmakers” showcase.