Chinese Directors Research Articles

From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (review)

Reviewed by: From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China Andreas Steen (bio) Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, eds. From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. 268 pp. Hardcover $82.50, ISBN 0-7425-5437-6. Paperback $29.95, ISBN 0-7425-5438-4. In 1990, Wu Wenguang's movie Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers gave birth to a new film genre in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Wu, like many young directors of what was soon labeled "underground film," had studied at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy and developed his career along a path quite different from that of the successful filmmakers of the Fifth Generation (e.g., Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige). The genre of underground film has undergone changes, as have its directors and official or governmental attitudes toward alternative film culture in the PRC. The trends have been documented in the Western press, but only recently have scholars in the West and in China attempted to examine this cultural field critically. From Underground to Independent, edited by two experts on Chinese film, intends to advance research on the PRC's underground film and to enhance scholarly knowledge of these films. In accordance with this purpose, the book contains a very useful appendix, consisting of a list of the holdings of the Chinese Underground Film Collection at the University of California, San Diego (with short summaries); a filmography; a bibliography; and a list of online resources. It should also be mentioned that the filmography lists about a hundred titles referred to in the book. Based on this film material and a broad set of sources such as personal observations and interviews and Chinese articles and ethnographic field work, the eight articles of the book employ different methodological approaches to explore China's underground film culture. One crucial problem is introduced in the preface, namely, the question of how to define this film genre: underground, independent, avant-garde, personal, newborn generation, urban generation, Sixth Generation? It is convincingly argued that "underground" is the best term; furthermore, the Chinese directors use it themselves. However, readers may find it confusing that several terms are used throughout the book. In the first article, Paul G. Pickowicz focuses on the political and social dimensions and thereby points at certain key issues that are also explored by other authors in the volume. He takes the recent shift of director Jia Zhangke from underground to aboveground as a starting point in analyzing the meaning and concepts associated with the term "underground." Underground filmmaking, it is said, has very little to do with artistic innovation, and in this respect the films "are quite disappointing" (p. 6). Underground filmmakers are most innovative in terms of content, because "they explore topics that are not treated [End Page 291] in mainstream productions." These topics evolve out of a "complex dance with the state" (p. 8), a dance that allows actors and directors to move between "under" and "above" grounds, but often denies them access to film distribution and exhibition networks within the PRC. Therefore, many directors "are busy chasing global fame" (p. 18) and concentrate on challenging topics (political, social, individual). Pickowicz criticizes this economically motivated new Occidentalism and the films' lack of historical depth. He is convinced that "the best underground work is far more interesting and vastly superior to anything that is being produced in the sterile state socialist sector" (p. 19). Since underground movies are made to attract foreign audiences, this evaluation is hardly surprising; it is, nevertheless, not entirely clear why official filmmaking should always be "sterile." Nowadays, a straightforward comparison of official and unofficial filmmaking seems to be inappropriate, especially if we consider the various networks between them. These surely encouraged the transformation from "underground to independent" and are frequently referred to in the other articles, which emphasize general aspects such as truthfulness, amateurism, independence, film content, criticism, and consumption. Zhang Yingjin looks into the filmmakers' claim that "my camera doesn't lie," which was the title of a book (2002) and of a documentary on independent filmmakers (2003). In his critical analysis, Zhang addresses complex issues of...

From Documentary to Fiction and Back: Reality and Contingency in Wang Bing’s and Jia Zhangke’s films

The generation of “independent” Chinese directors has repeatedly crossed and displaced the borders between fiction and documentary film in their works. While originally linked to practical constraints, this trend has developed into a full-fledged aesthetic programme in the works of Wang Bing and Jia Zhangke. Both directors document the demise of the world of China’s state-owned industries and its impact in terms of livelihoods and social ideals, highlighting the subjective dimension of its dystopic significance. Finally, this article argues that both directors seek to define an aesthetics of contingency, commensurate both with the historical processes they document, and the absurdity felt by individuals who have no control over them.

Made in China: The Gods Go East

ABSTRACT Jamie Uys's The Gods Must be Crazy and its sequel films are icons of South African entertainment, perceived both as hilarious comedy and blatant apartheid propaganda. Three further sequels, made from Hong Kong by Chinese directors, are hardly known in South Africa. These films are particularly interesting from a cultural point of view, as they portray Orientals (and white South Africans) from an Oriental perspective and San Bushmen from a position that is neither Western nor set in an apartheid/post-apartheid South African context. The current context of globalization in which cultures are expressed and negotiated creates an interesting space for the analysis of these “multicultural” films. This article examines these films especially, Crazy Safari, and discusses them in terms of responses from focus groups, one of Taiwanese viewers in Durban, and another of Kenyans in Kenya.

The Past, the Present, and the Future An Interview with Wu Ziniu

Wu Ziniu has been considered one of the most important Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers. Wu has directed more than ten films, such as Evening Bell (1988) and Nanjing 1937 (1995), and won numerous awards both at home and abroad which includes a Silver Bear Award in the Berlin International Film Festival. In October 2000, he was one of four featured Chinese directors at an international symposium on Chinese cinema at Swarthmore College, and lectured at Temple University, Columbia University, and New York University. Kong conducted this interview in Beijing, May 31, 2002.

Women in the city: Mobility, television and the choices of becoming modern

This paper looks at two films by Chinese directors from the last decade, Zhou Xiaowen's Ermo (1994) and Zhang Yimou's Not One Less (1998). The first film details the experience of a rural woman who makes a journey to the city and subsequently returns with the prize of a television set; the second tells of a village girl working as a relief teacher who turns to television in order to track down a missing student. The author believes that these films highlight a paradox in China's rush to embrace modernity, and a disjunction between mobility, modernity and transnational imagination.

Interlocking Directorates as Corporate Governance in Third World Multinationals: Theory and Evidence from Thailand

Given the paucity of corporate governance research on Third World multinational enterprises (MNEs), we provide an exploratory description of the patterns of interlocking directorates as corporate governance in Thailand-based MNEs in this study. Specifically, we raise a key question: Do the interlocks network attributes and individual board directors of MNEs differ systematically from those of non-MNEs? Drawing upon resource dependence theory, we hypothesize that, compared with non-MNEs, MNEs in Thailand (1) have more densely connected interlocks, (2) occupy more central locations in the interlocks network, (3) have more ethnic Chinese directors, and (4) appoint more military directors. Data from the top 200 listed firms in Thailand support three of the four hypotheses, and suggest a number of implications and future research directions.

Speaking about China's Spoken Drama: A Roundtable with Chinese Directors and Playwrights

Speaking about China's Spoken Drama: A Roundtable with Chinese Directors and Playwrights