Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Other notable Sixth Generation directors include Wang Xiaoshuai, whose
Beijing Bi-
cycle
(2001) is a tale of a Běijīng youth seeking to recover the stolen bike that he needs
for his job, and Lou Ye, whose dreamy, neo-noir style displayed in films such as
Suzhou
River
(2000) and
Summer Palace
(2006) mark him out from his grittier contemporaries.
But it is Jia Zhangke who is the most talented of the film-makers who emerged in the
1990s. His debut,
Pickpocket
(1997), is a remarkable portrait of a small-time criminal in a
bleak provincial town, while the follow-up
Platform
(2000) was a highly ambitious tale of
a changing China told through the story of a musical group who transforms from being a
state-run troupe performing patriotic songs to a pop band. Subsequent movies such as
Still
Life
(2006) and
24 City
(2008) have shown an increasing maturity that bodes well for the
future, although like many Sixth Generation film-makers much of his early work has nev-
er been seen in Chinese cinemas.
While the Sixth Generation were focusing on China's underbelly, a few directors have
gone in the opposite direction by making unashamedly commercial movies. Native
Beijinger Feng Xiaogang is the best known of them and his mix of clever comedies and
action pictures, such as
Cellphone
(2003),
Assembly
(2007) and
If You Were the One
(2008) have made him China's most bankable director. Following in his footsteps is Ning
Hao, whose fun crime caper
Crazy Stone
(2006) and its follow-up,
Crazy Racer
(2009),
also stormed the domestic box office.
An Uncertain Future
The optimism that accompanied the rise of the Fifth and Sixth Generations has begun to
dissipate in the last couple of years. Cinema-going has always been a middle-class pas-
time in China, with ticket prices too high for most ordinary people and industrial-scale
DVD piracy further reducing the potential audience. And with more and more Hollywood
productions being shown in China now, the domestic film industry is discovering, as have
other film industries around the world, that it is very hard to compete with star-driven
blockbuster movies.
Today, only a few directors who are able to attract domestic and overseas investment,
such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, or who are seen as surefire bets, such as Feng
Xiaogang, can raise significant budgets to make movies in China. Increasingly, it is histor-
ical dramas that are being shot, rather than contemporary stories. There is a real danger
that the Chinese film industry will shrink into insignificance in the face of Hollywood
pressure and indifference from an audience no longer satisfied by the subject-matter being
approved by the CCP's censors.
