ASIA 355 History of Chinese Cinema - upload copy PDF

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Lecture 1: Intro ●

History of film in China ○ Chinese Cinema (“Electric Shadows” 電影): Six generations –the “orthodox” historiography ■ First Chinese film : Dingjun Mountain (ding jun shan, silent film, 1905) made in Beijing’s Fengtai Photography ■ 1913, Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan directed The Difficult Couple. 1st generation.

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5th Generation ■ Majority graduate from Beijing Film Academy in 1982, since Cultural Revolution ■ Rejection of old Socialist-Realist propaganda films ● Psychological exploration and reflections on recent history ● Rural focus ■ Famous dudes like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige 1990s: post-Tiananmen Square state censorship – emergence of “Sixth Generation” underground film makers. ■ Low-budget, semi-documentary style, hand-held cameras and long takes. ■ Urban life, social tensions, rebellious youth, dislocation, the marginal groups ■ Increased international financing / joint productions for both 5th & 6th generation films “Main Melody” films 主旋律電影: 1987 onwards - state-subsidized patriotic dramas of recent history and heroic battles; Hollywood style: Founding of a Republic 建國大業 (2009); Wolf Warrior (2) 戰狼二(2017). New Year Films ■ 1997: Feng Xiaogang 馮小剛 makes the first of several “New Year’s” films – major (domestic) crowd-pleasers (witty, contemporary, stylish, mostly un-political).

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Hollywood blockbusters are a major threat to Chinese market, but domestic films holding their own plus often profitably reach international markets.

Other history

○ Spring in a Small Town ○ Lukewarm reception, re-discovered decades later ○ Remade by Tian Zhuangzhuang for a contemporary audience ○ Voted by HK Film awards as best film ever made ○ Historical background ■ After the eight year war between KMT and CCP ■ Leftist intellectuals and leftist moviemakers in Shanghai ● Fei Mu ○ Reluctant to be part of the leftist film circle ○ Known as a poet-director ○ Born in a traditional intellectual family in 1906 ○ Used new technology to tell Chinese stories ○ Ethos converse with how Chinese poets and intellectuals write and express their emotions

Sikov: Chapter 1 ●

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Mise-en-scene = What is in the scene or on stage ○ Consists of all elements placed in front of the camera, including the figure behaviour (actor’s expressions, gestures, etc.) ○ Includes camera’s actions and angles and cinematography ○ Important because it’s how information is conveyed to us ○ Totality of expressive content within the image ○ Describes sequence and individual shots Shot = Basic element of filmmaking ○ A piece of film run through the camera, exposed and developed

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Uninterrupted run of the camera or image on film Subject camera distance (types of shots) ■ Close-up shot isolates an object, making it appear relatively large ● Ex. a face ● Extreme close-up may include features on a face ○ Ex. a single eye ● Can see expressions and infer emotion ● In relation to something else ■ Medium shot are taken from a medium distance ● Waist up ■ Three-quarter shot takes in the human body from just below the knees ■ Full shot is of the entire body ■ Long shot appears to be taken from a long distance ● Extreme long shot

● Camera angle (types of shots) ■ Eye-level ■ Low-angle ● Aggrandize subjects ■ High-angle ● Make them look inferior ■ Bird’s-eye view ■ Dutch-tilt / canted angle

■ Shots can also be defined by number of people, ie one-shot, two-shot, three-shot ■ Constitute distinct groups ○ Master shot ■ Taken from a long distance and includes as much of the set or location as possible Space and time ○ Currently, sound film runs at 24 fps ■ Old days were between 16-18 fps, would use a physical cranker ● Undercrank to go fast, overcrank to go slow ○ Synchronized sound film = characters are seen and heard talking at the same time on screen ■ In the late 1920s, this meant that image tracks and soundtracks had to be both recorded and projected at the same speed to avoid distortion ○ Reel time = pieces of time manipulated (cut down) to create a film ○ Lexiconning = speeding up the standard 24 fps by hundredths of a second, which may shorten the total run time by 6-7% Composition ○ Composition is the arrangements of objects and character within a frame ■ Frame ● Two definitions: 24 little rectangles are filled with images, which are then projected vs borders of the image on screen ○ Refers to the relationship of lines, volumes, masses, and shapes at a single instant in a representation ■ Mise-en-scene refers to everything else over the course of the shot ○ Retake to fix ruined compositions ○ Problematic definition, cuz all movies involve motion ■ Likewise, shot combined together by editing, means the composition of one shot should have something to do with the others ○ Aspect ratio = describes the precise relation of width of a rectangular image to its height ■ Academy ratio is not 1:33:1, but 1:37:1 human world, imagery > narrative, and symbolism > socialist realism ■ Using nature’s spatiality to deliver cultural meanings Chen Kaige ○ Born in Beijing, 1952 ○ In 1984, he directed Yellow Earth ■ Won a Silver Leopard in 1985 ○ King of the Children in 1987 ○ Farewell My Concubine in 1993, which was awarded at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival Zhang Yimou ○ Demonstrates how imagery and composition render meaning and visual effect Cinematography ○ Photography for motion pictures, general term that brings together all the strictly photographic elements that produce the images we see projected on the screen ○ Lighting devices and their effects ○ Colour tones ○ Lenses used to record images ○ Shape of image ○ How and what it means to create something Setting ○ Shaanxi province, near Yan’an which was the headquarters of CCP ○ Shaan Bei (North of Shaanxi), Yellow Plateau ■ Silent and enduring Chinese peasants ■ Suffered hardships from life and nature Bitter songs ○ Confucian tradition of collecting folk songs to judge climate of popular opinion ○ CCP collected and transformed folk songs and culture to spread communist messages ○ Variety of songs in Yellow Earth New filmic language ○ Use of classical chinese painting to express avant-guard attempt ■ Taking cover under the abstractionist ambiguities ○ Zhan Yimou: “In traditional Chinese aesthetics, a painting’s value lies in its idea and this idea precedes the brush. I think cinematography is just the same.” ■ Using camera to paint and deliver visual significance ■ Impressionistic, not an exact depiction, but we know what is being conveyed / visualized Cinematography and the daoist landscape ○ Limitless, empty horizons ■ Tiny people within vast natural cosmos

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● Appearing in margins of scenes ● Similar to traditional landscape painting / poetry ○ Slow unmoving shots of emptiness: unfolding like a handscroll ○ Water = Cuiqiao ○ Silence versus songs / gestures as the main form of communication ■ Little dialogue ○ Ambiguity and open-endedness Power of emptiness ○ Language system of shots ○ Image is more significant than plot in regard to meaning ○ The yellow earth and yellow river are the protagonist of the story Chen Kaige on the meaning of the film ○ Yellow river is just like an image of our peoples ○ Nurtured the splendors of China’s ancient civilization ○ The person who embodies the ideal of human endurance is the main female character, Cuiqiao ■ The river which drowns her is the same river which nurtures her Cuiqiao is the only female = motherhood = yellow earth / river ○ Hidden gender, yin Aim to explore national character ○ Rejection of cultural revolution ideals of the three prominences ■ Positive characters should be prominent, then heroes more prominent, then main character most prominent ■ No positive heroic characters in Yellow Earth, not even Gu Qing ■ No positive messages: the party does not save nor understand the people ○ Lots of ambiguities ■ What happens to the characters? Is Gu Qing successful?

Sikov: Chapter 3 Sikov: Chapter 4 Lecture 5: Farewell My Concubine Directed by Chen Kaige in 1993

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○ Adapted from HK novelist Lillian Lee ○ Won the Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival National epic / love triangle ○ Sweeping narrative from 1920s-1970s ○ Beijing opera as focus and allegorical carrier of meaning for film / China ○ Melodrama of desire, loss, betrayal, and trauma: personal and national

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Cultural Revolution as an indispensable framework ○ Psychic and historical framework needed to understand 5th gen filmmakers ■ Sent-down youth, firsthand observers of peasants in rural areas ○ Tension between ideological orthodoxy and social realities Pairs of tension ○ Male vs female image ○ On stage vs off stage (real life) ○ Dream vs reality ○ Life vs death Cross-dressing and performing gender ○ Similar to Hua Mulan - Wu Qionghua in Red Detachment ○ Beijing opera is an exclusively male art form, all female roles are played by men ■ Male actors train for years to mask his gender by stagecraft, costumes, and makeup ● Gender identity as a sociocultural construction ■ Mei Langfang (actor in Beijing Opera): performing and internalizing gender identities ● Performed for Japanese ● One particular soldier makes his way into the story ○ Shitou / Duan Xiaolou plays the the jing  (painted face, male role) ○ Douzi / Cheng Dieyi performs the dan ( female role ■ Identifies with his roles: the Nun (forcibly converted; the Concubine (utter loyalty to her king) ■ Performing gender through embodied transformation ● Symbolic castration ● Corporal punishment ● Pedophile shit happens to him (gets raped, molested) ● Cross-dressing ■ Gender or sexual identity is neither a natural given, nor a matter of free choice: Institutional and social forces interact with the self to shape identity

Lecture for To Live ●

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Zhang Yimou ○ 1968-1971: sent down youth working in Shaanxi ○ 1978: joined cinematography department in Beijing film academy ○ 5th generation director ■ Uses film to reflect cultural, social and political moments in China’s history To Live is based on Yuhua’s novel, but differs slightly in its perspective and ending ○ Featured actor Ge You and actress Gong Li “The people” ○ Often depicted as the foundation of PRC

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“The people” or “the masses” often appears on posters, official statements, etc. ■ Used to unify the people to serve the people ■ Shared concern and goal with the CCP ■ Reiterated even after the postwar period: “Love the People” in 1983 Height of Maoism ■ Invested with the value of political resistance; construction of national identity under communism ■ Boundary between old China and the new, red China ■ Satisfaction of physical need as a politically correct goal ● Defining freedom and democracy in a Chinese context

Setting ○ Civil war between nationalists and communists ○ Founding of PRC ○ Great Leap Forward ○ Cultural Revolution Title refers to surviving instead of enjoying throughout the various change and upheavals in Chinese history ○ To live or stay alive becomes something worth celebrating Unglorified depiction of the people ○ Petty, small-minded and ready to sacrifice others to protect themselves ■ Fugui participates in the war and fights on both sides ● Not really driven ideologically, but driven to survive ○ Smallness of the individuals are also encapsulated in the very abrupt transitions between periods, symbolically diminishing these people as insignificant within the grand historical context ○ Long’er vs Fugui ■ The former wins Fugui’s housing when the latter gambles it away ● 1st area of conflict in the film ■ However, their situations are reversed, when Long’er is killed for being a landlord during the founding of the PRC ■ Fugui stand by and watches 3rd person omniscient narrative ○ Different from Yuhua’s novel, which used Fugui’s first person perspective ○ Focuses on grander political and social consequence of the time period Public performing: beating the child-governance and self-governance ○ Youqing pours spicy noodles on a kid who bullies his sister ■ Waste of food especially in an era where everyone was poor and things had to be shared, seen as anti-communist ■ Fugui has to admonish his son in front of others, as a result, by beating his child ○ Physical punishment in the public eye ■ Make clear the boundaries between father and son (Fugui and Youqing), regain authority

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Make clear his support of the new communist way of life ● Fugui’s means of coping with the communist government, which is the father of all in this film Shadow-puppet and its symbolic meaning ○ Fugui never parts from them = sentimental value ○ He himself is a shadow puppet, under the communists Fugui’s answers to Youqing and Mantou ○ Youqing receives as pessimistic response, set during the Cultural Revolution ○ Mantou receives a more hopeful response, set after the Cultural Revolution ■ Positive ending to the film, where the family still anticipates good things to come despite suffering for so long ■ Different from Yuhua’s original narrative Food and its symbolism ○ Wasted and causes the death of people

Lecture for Balzac and the Little Seamstress ●

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Dai Sijie was sent down to Ya'an, Sichuan ○ Attended Sichuan University with a degree in history ○ Currently resides in France ○ Transnational nostalgia toward sent-down youth’’s history (semi-autobiographical film making) Historical background: ○ Anti-rightist movement in 1957-1959 ○ Great leap forward in 1958-1962 ○ Three year famine in 1959-1961 ○ Cultural Revolution in 1966-1976 5th generation directors ○ All sent down youth ■ Disillusioned about revolution after contacting reality in rural China ○ Explored the meaning of Chinese culture and history (grand topics and about larger than life heroes) ○ Large themes such as patriotism, nationalism, heroism, suffering and indifferences etc. 6th generation directors ○ Urban documentation ○ Focus on ordinary individuals of marginal groups ○ Not approved by the government, mostly underground directors The novel and the film ○ Film premiered in the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the best foreign film at the Golden Globes in 2003 ○ Artistic and pastoral imagination

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Echoes Shen Congwen’s lyricism and scar literature after the Cultural Revolution ■ Lyricize the youth, pain, and scars ■ Recording personal memories (director’s own autobiography) Colonial / self-Oriental interpretation ○ Why Balzac? ■ Internalized eurocentrism; critics commented Dai caters to the French sense of cultural superiority ■ Plot of Balzac (the book) panders to the French reader’s sense of pride and value judgement ○ Uses French elements to tell a Chinese soty ■ Communicates a self-deprecating, comedic diagnosis of a tragic historical period Dai Sijie’s third culture ○ Hard to define, as he reworks the cultural boundaries between China and France as both and neither-or; mostly in-between ○ Both lyricism and realism ○ Mix of 5th and 6th generation directors’ film characteristics The violin ○ Western instrument ○ Music illuminates a banal way of life ○ Gives the poor villagers a glimpse into something new and cultured ○ Bring people from a dark environment to a brighter environment (enlightenment) New clock vs the old tradition ○ Originally the villagers got up when the sun rose and stopped working when it set ○ The modern/western invention of the alarm clock conquers the tradition ■ Now used by the village head to organize times for work and rest ■ Also “adjusted” by the main characters to trick the villagers into ending work earlier Nameless little seamstress = innocence and blank slate of the unenlightened villagers ○ Dreams of the outside world, made handcrafts of planes, etc. ○ Becomes enchanted by Balzac Four-eye’s self criticism ○ Typical session during cultural revolution ■ Helps heighten awareness of communist values ○ Camera moves back and forth between the party leader and four eyes, with the the trio ■ Forms a conversation between these groups ■ Shows how different the little seamstress is becoming Introducing foreign literature, films, and ideas to the local ○ Sent-down youth were mediators of the outside world and the local village ■ Reading forbidden books

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Taught beauty is quite priceless, leading to the seamstress leaving the village to explore the outside world ○ Re-telling of the Balzac novel, packaged as a socialist film Cross-cutting between a traditional family experience (riddle by the musician) vs western passions of sex and love (the main characters fucking) ○ Naturalizes western conceptions of love, innocence, and sexual desire ○ Integration of the untainted romance with the foreign

Lecture for Big Shot's Funeral ●

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Feng Xiaogang ○ Former PLA theatre troupe set designer turned director ○ Many of his films achieved major domestic box office success ■ New model of Chinese national cinema as cultural fast food ○ “New Year’s Comedies” (since 1997) ■ Entertaining films with a happy ending ■ Imitates HK and Hollywood entertainment ■ Caters to urbanites and fits in with popular culture ○ Transnational flourishes but with local tastes: Beijing dialect and the stories of China’s new rich Social and economic structural changes ○ Depicts how these changes impacted individuals living the society ○ Obsolete notion of the Maoist era “unbreakable rice bowl” with the emergence of laid off workers ■ Such as Yo Yo in the film ○ Chinese was admitted into the WTO in 2001 ■ In the same year, this film was released ■ The first Sino-American co-production ■ Reflective film with self-mocking, satire, and pastiche to depict ambiguity, anxiety and uncertainty when facing new social change Little potato characters ○ Anti-hero: their struggles and goals in everyday life ○ Major success in the box office ■ Sense of empowerment for the ordinary man ■ Aligned with the interest of the state in an environment with massive changes ■ Postmodern comedy ● Loose structure ● Fragmented details ● Lack of depth and purpose Film production ○ Self-referential play on domestic fantasies of globalize luxuries and glamour through commercialized lens

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Playfulness as a mhor component of his directorial style ■ An opposite way of thinking ○ Chen Xiaoming labels Feng’s style as postpolitics ■ Everything is political and nothing is political at once and the same time ■ Politics is everywhere and yet it subverts itself at any moment ○ Transnational production ■ Producers: Huayi Brothers, Taihe Film Invest Company, and Beijing Film Studio (China) + Columbia Pictures Production Asia (USA) ■ Stars: Ge You & Ying Da (China), Rosalind Kwan (HK), Donald Sutherland (Canada) and Paul Mazursky (USA) ■ Enjoyed global distribution, first released in China and other parts of asia, then the various countries of Europe and the Americas Director’s statement: “satire about how advertising has saturated every part of life, and about people’s insane lust for money” Plot ○ Famous film director Donald Tyler arrives in Beijing to remake a film (Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor ) ; then demands a comedic funeral film before he enters a coma; Yo Yo seeks financial support by producing placement and brand sponsorship, to be stage in the Forbidden City ○ Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor ■ Set in Forbidden City, about the tragic life of Pu Yi, the last emperor ■ Supported by the Chinese government Consuming the old ○ Old, historic areas are being commercialized and modernized ■ Ex. Starbucks in the Forbidden City ○ Global exhibition ■ Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige were the main cultural brokers who exp...