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The Great Wall of Cinema
| Article
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10888 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1993 |
1,909 Words |
| Author
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Scarlet Cheng
Scarlet Cheng, based in Los Angeles, is a contributing editor
to the arts section of The World & I. |
Westerners who once knew Chinese film only through high-kicking kung fu flicks like Bruce Lee's First of Fury have been astonished at the light-year leap in artistry and thematic sophistication of the new cinema from the People's Republic of China. Naturalistic acting and earthy storytelling are the hallmarks of this new cinema, and it includes the exciting works of such "Fifth Generation" filmmakers as Chen Kaige, Li Shaohong, and Zhang Yimou.
And those who had never even heard of Chinese films saw them catapulted onto the international stage when they were nominated for best foreign-language film by the American Academy Awards two years in a row.
In 1991 it was Ju Dou. In 1992 it was Raise the Red Lantern. Both were directed by Zhang Yimou, the man who has probably done more to catch international attention for his country's film industry than any other person, in addition to uplifting the very standards of Chinese filmmaking itself (see accompanying profile on Zhang, starting on page 122).
The system under which these films are made is a labyrinthine one. Late lat year, I undertook a three-week trip through China, during which I visited Beijing and Xian to observe how film is made and distributed in the most populous nation on earth. And, as it has been for decades, filmmaking remains tightly controlled.
Under the communists the arts have traditionally been considered tools of education and persuasion. In his talks an Yenan in the early 1940s Mao Zedong himself propounded his conviction that the arts must serve the body politic when he noted "[Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind."
Such dicta rose to their zenith during Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when works had to be so pure, so strident, and so thoroughly revolutionary that only a handful that passed through the exacting screen of arts czar Jiang Qing were allowed to be performed. For those ten years schools closed down, and the film industry came to a virtual halt, with few productions permitted.
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