Film Studies in China 2

Chase Coulson Christensen

Description

Film Studies in China 2 is a collection of selected articles chosen from issues of the journal Contemporary Cinema published throughout the year and translated for an English-speaking audience. As one of the most prestigious academic film studies journals in China, Contemporary Cinema has been active not only in publishing Chinese scholarship for Chinese readers but also in reaching out to academics from across the globe. This anthology hopes to encourage a cross-cultural academic conversation on the fields of Chinese cinema and media studies. Following the successful release of the first volume this is the second collection to be released in the Film Studies in China series. 

Sujets

• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Media
• Film
• ART
• China
• Cultural Studies
• General
• History of film
• Video
• General officer
• Cinema of Asia
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 08 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789381641
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2020 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2020 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2020 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
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Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Translated by: Chase Coulson Christensen
Print ISBN 9781789381627
ePDF ISBN 9781789381634
ePUB ISBN 9781789381641
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Contents
S ECTION I : I NDUSTRY

1. On Chinese Film Industrial Trade Structure and Its Internationalized Strategic Path
张宏 /Zhang Hong
2. On the Differentiation Strategies of Four Internet Film Production Companies
胡黎红 /Hu Lihong 胡慧 /Hu Hui
3. From the Golden Age of the Market to the Golden Age of Creativity—2016 A Memo to Chinese Filmmakers
尹鸿 /Yin Hong 梁君健 /Liang Junjian
4. The Analysis and Strategy of Chinese Rural Film Market Development
张小丽 /Zhang Xiaoli
S ECTION II: C ULTURE AND A ESTHETICS

5. The Internationalization Strategy of Chinese Cinema: Theory and Practice
饶曙光 /Rao Shuguang
6. Seven Visions: Rooted in the Traditional, Steeped in the Nouvelle—A Study of Zheng DaSheng and his Films
万传法 /Wan ChuanFa
7. A Kaleidoscopic View of Wang Han-lun’s Celebrity Image
岳莹 / Yue Ying
8. The Impact of Hong Kong Cinema on Mainland Cinema after the Returnof Hong Kong
赵卫防 /Zhao Weifang
9. The Celebrity Face: Contemporary Celebrity Culture – Body Obsession and Physical Fetishism
陈晓云 /Chen Xiaoyun
10. Significance in Survival: On the Auteurial Visions in Lu Chuan’s Films
皇甫宜川 /Huangfu Yichuan
S ECTION III : H ISTORY

11. Revisiting 1920s: Reflections on the Nationalism in Early Chinese Films
秦喜清 /Qin XiQing
12. The Optimistic Tradition in Early Chinese Films: A Perspective of Intellectual History
安燕 /An Yan
S ECTION IV: I NTERVIEWS

13. Interview with Director Guo Ke: Whispers through a Crinkle in Time
14. Interview with Director Mei Feng: The Aesthetic Compass of Classic Films
15. Interview with Director Lu Yang: What Matters Is What You Do with the Truth
Notes on Contributors
SECTION I
INDUSTRY
1. On Chinese Film Industrial Trade Structure and Its Internationalized Strategic Path
张宏 / Zhang Hong
Part 1: Domestic Film Trade Conditions
In the summer of 2017, the Chinese film market was gripped in Wolf Warriors 2 mania. The film smashed Chinese box office records and went on to gross a record-setting CNY¥5.6 billion. Yet, contrary to the Chinese film industry analysts’ lofty expectations, the film’s first-quarter North American box office receipts practically flatlined, a striking contrast that has been striking at the soul and tugging at the heartstrings of the Chinese populace ever since. As a result, the chilly reception for Chinese films abroad has once again cast a spell over nearly everyone in Chinese showbusiness.
With the development of the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, Chinese films ‘going out to the world’ is undoubtedly an extremely effective means to promote cultural understanding between China and her foreign neighbours in the global village, and even convey a foreign-friendly image of China and export her cultural soft power. The thing is, it is an indisputable fact that there is a massive annual trade deficit in China’s film industry. This chapter will attempt to analyse the domestic film trade structure through classic international trade theory. On this basis, it proposes that China take the path of internationalization to develop its domestic film industry by enhancing its competitiveness internationally and strengthening its cultural soft power.
At that time, the deputy director of the Film Bureau of China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, Mr Luan GuoZhi, summarized China’s film exports as ‘three more and three less’, meaning, a high number of films were being made, but few made it ‘outside’ the country. Chinese films were being played at a great number of international charity events, but few were being let into commercial theatres abroad. Chinese films were being shown at numerous Chinese theatre chains, but fewer were being played at foreign art theatres, and far fewer at mainstream cinemas in any country other than China. 1 Starting with recent statistics, we can do a bit of snooping around to gain some insight into how Chinese film exports have really been doing.
Chinese Films ‘Hot on the Mainland, Cold in Other Lands’
In examining the big picture of the Chinese film market, we are shown that domestically produced films have been heating up year by year, both in terms of glowing word-of-mouth and sizzling box office performance – becoming a superpower in the film market. Yet when these films, which are highly acclaimed and wildly popular in their homeland, have gone abroad, they have met with an icy reception. This ‘hot-at-home, cold-abroad’ phenomenon shows no signs of letting up.
Case in point, Chinese films fizzled out in North America, the world’s largest film market, in the first half of 2017. One of the biggest bombs of the year was the wildly popular Journey to the West – The Demons Strike Back , – an adaptation of the famous Chinese classic – which hit North American theatres on 3rd February and grossed a paltry $880,000 US dollars (about ¥5.81 million CNY). Yet box office receipts in China for the same film totalled ¥1.656 billion CNY (2017 Biannual China Film Report). The comparison of domestic and foreign box office receipts of the remaining films in the top five is shown in Table 1. Film Box Office (USD Millions) Chinese Box Office (CNY Billions) North American Ranking Journey to the West – · Demons Strike Back 8.803 1.656 7602 The Devotion of Suspect X 6.864 4.00 7916 Battle of Memories 5.945 2.9 8095 Duckweed 4.715 10.49 8383 Kung Fu Yoga 3.626 17.53 8713
Table 1: Top Five Chinese Films at the North American Box Office (First Half of 2017).
Source: 2017 Biannual China Film Report.
Table 2: Source: The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT).
A long-standing trade deficit of the Chinese film industry is steadily increasing. The Chinese market has been inundated recently with an influx of import titles boasting a cast of strapping stars and starlets dripping sex-appeal, top-notch production values and state-of-the-art effects technology that have reaped huge box office. The Fast and the Furious 8 is a perfect example. On its first day of the screening, the film broke the record for the mainland single-day box office champion with a massive box office take of ¥386 million CNY. Finally, it became the most popular imported film in 2017 with a box office take of ¥2.6 billion CNY. Even the Indian film Dangal simply waltzed in and earned nearly ¥1.3 billion CNY at the box office.
It can be seen from the chart that most foreign films entering the country often rake in the cash and have not hit the ‘hot-in, cold-out’, wall like their Chinese counterparts. For the purposes of this essay, a list has been compiled of overseas box-office performance for domestic films as well as box-office market performance for films imported into China over the past four years (as seen in Table 2).
Table 2 shows clearly that the overseas grosses of Chinese films are much lower than the box office of imported films, and this gap has been expanding year by year. Grosses of Chinese films in other territories can be understood as ‘out’ and the box office is understood as ‘in’, thus showing a serious trade imbalance.
As can be seen from Table 3, domestic and overseas grosses for Chinese films have exhibited varying degrees of growth, but the ratio between overseas grosses and domestic box office is relatively low, hovering between 10% and 14%. It is clear from the data that the exportability of domestically produced films in recent years has been weak and has shown no strong signs of improvement. The largest market for domestically produced movies is still Mainland China.
In this era of global economic integration, every industry is concerned about domestic and international markets, and the film industry is no exception. But it is not simply the film industry’s push for profits that drives it to foreign lands like this, but also its value as a vessel carrying Chinese cultural messages out to the thronging waves of humanity beyond her shores. So, taking full advantage of the current momentum and combing the appropriate international political and cultural environment to better enable Chinese films to ‘go out’ beyond her shores is an important issue for the Chinese film industry. Year Overseas Grosses (Billions CNY) Domestic Grosses (Billions CNY) Overseas Grosses/ Domestic Box Office 2013 1.41 12.76 11% 2014 1.87 15.70 12% 2015 2.77 27.13 10% 2016 3.82 26.66 14%
Table 3: Box-office performance of Chinese and foreign films from 2013 to 2016.
Part 2: Chinese Film Industry Trade Structure Analysis
Film exports, in a sense, belong in the domain of international trade. It is apparent from the above analysis that the successful export of Chinese film products is no simple matter, as it possesses no unique competitive advantage to set it apart within the fiercely competitive international matrix, meaning that the value-added of the industry cannot be recovered from the diversified market. It is thi