Abstract
This chapter presents how a group of films were separated from the mainstream in the 1990s from the production end. The appearance of independent production, enabled by the film industry reforms as well as the courage of individuals, was the driving force behind the rise of the second art wave. The new mode of independent filmmaking preferred certain subject matters and stylistic choices, which inspired other in-system film productions to follow. Unlike the first art wave of the Fifth Generation cinema, the second art wave was denied legitimacy domestically and had to rely on international film festival circuits for survival. Consciously aligned with other youth subcultures and forms of modern art, the second art wave gained its alternative positioning, which helped to consolidate the art cinema as a whole.
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Notes
- 1.
Pierre Bourdieu and Randal Johnson, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993), 115.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
While the term “leitmotif film” remains popular, “entertainment film” has been increasingly replaced by “commercial film” in the press due to the commercialization of the film industry since the late 1990s.
- 4.
Ni Zhen, Gaige yu zhongguo dianying [Reforms and Chinese Cinema] (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1994), 17.
- 5.
Teng Jinxian, “Zhongguo dianying yi jiu ba qi: Yinmu xia de sikao” [Chinese Cinema in 1987: Thoughts Off the Screen], Dangdai dianying [Contemporary Cinema], no. 2 (1988): 1–4.
- 6.
For a chronicle of key events concerning the development of leitmotif films, see Wu Xiaoli, Jiushi niandai zhongguo dianying lun [On the Chinese Cinema of the 1990s] (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2005), 147–51.
- 7.
The trilogy includes The Battle of Liaoshen (Dir. Yang Guangyuan, 1991), The Battle of Huaihai (Dir. Cai Jinwei, 1991), and The Battle of Pingjin (Dir. Wei Lian, 1991).
- 8.
Ni, Gaige yu zhongguo dianying [Reforms and Chinese Cinema]: 161.
- 9.
Chen Haosu, “Guanyu yulepian zhutilun ji qita” [About the Ontology of Entertainment Film and Other Things], in China Film Year Book 1989 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1989).
- 10.
The article written by Zhang Nuanxin and Li Luo, entitled “Tan dianying yuyan de xiandaihua” [On the Modernization of Film Language] was the de facto manifesto of the Fourth Generation directors. In the article, Zhang and Li survey the historical development of film art in the West and call for the reform of the Chinese film language. They give special attention to de-dramatization, long takes, and mise-en-scene. For more details, see Zhang Nuanxin, and Li Tuo, “Tan dianying yuyan de xiandai hua” [On the Modernization of Film Language], Dianying yishu [Film Art] 3 (1979): 40–52. For the discussion about the aesthetic characteristics of the Fourth Generation films, see Dai Jinhua, Wu zhong feng jing: zhongguo dian ying wen hua, 1978–1998 (Beijing: Beijing da xue chu ban she, 2000), 3–77.
- 11.
For a detailed analysis of the Fifth Generation cinema, see Paul Clark, Reinventing China: A Generation and Its Films (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005). Dai, Wu zhong feng jing: Zhongguo dian ying wen hua, 1978–1998. Ying Zhu, Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: The Ingenuity of the System (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). Xudong Zhang, Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms: Cultural Fever, Avant-Garde Fiction, and the New Chinese Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
- 12.
“Root -seeking” literature is a literary school in the early 1980s, which explored the native cultural traits for a new understanding of present culture. The representative writers were Han Shaogong, Ah Cheng, and Mo Yan. For the connection between the “root-seeking” literature and the Fifth Generation cinema, see Chap. 4, “Colorful Folk in the Landscape: Fifth-Generation Filmmakers and Roots-Searchers” in Marie Claire Huot, China’s New Cultural Scene: A Handbook of Changes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 91–125.
- 13.
For more information about the Western high-culture quest of the 1980s, see Jing Wang, High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996).
- 14.
Scholars have different views on when the Fifth Generation cinema ended. It was either year 1988, 1990 , or 1993 depending on different perspectives. See Duan Xiaojun, “Dianying ‘diwudai’ yu ‘diwudai’ dianying,” Dianying pingjie [Movie Reviews], no. 08 (2009): 1–4.
- 15.
Jia Zhangke and Wang Xiaoshuai admitted in their interviews that the film Yellow Earth was the reason that made them choose the filmmaking career. See Cheng Qingsong and Huang Ou, Wo de sheyingji bu sahuang [My Camera Does Not Lie] (Beijing: Zhongguo youyi chuban gongsi, 2002).
- 16.
The annotations are mine. Lin Shaoxiong, “Guanyu jin 20 nian zhongguo dianying de 18 ge guanjianci—diwudai yu diliudai daoyan bijiao” [Eighteen Key Words About Chinese Cinema of the Last Twenty Years—The Comparison Between the Fifth Generation and the Sixth Generation Directors], in Duoyuan yujing zhong de xinshengdai dianying [The New Generation Films in Pluralistic Discourses], ed. Chen Xihe and Shi Chuan (Shanghai: Xuelin Publishing, 2003).
- 17.
Li Ming, “Zhongguo xindianying daoyan qunxianglu” [The Profiles of Chinese New Cinema Directors], DV@Shidai [DV@Time], no. 10 (2007): 119–22.
- 18.
Liu Qingfeng, “The Topography of Intellectual Culture in 1990s Mainland China: A Survey,” in Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry, ed. Gloria Davies (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 55.
- 19.
Cheng, Wo de sheyingji bu sahuang [My Camera Does Not Lie]: 310.
- 20.
For a perceptive analysis of the thematic and stylistic connections between the two independently developed movements, see Zhen Zhang, “Introduction,” in The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, ed. Zhen Zhang (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 16–21.
- 21.
Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong, Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 5.
- 22.
Ibid., 16.
- 23.
Lu Xiaobo and Elizabeth J. Perry, Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 3.
- 24.
Yin Jindi, “Beijing de wenhua getihu shang” [Beijing’s Self-Employed Artists Part I], Liaowang [Outlook], no. 22 (1992): 30–31.
- 25.
Wang Jifang, Ershishiji zuihou de langman: Beijing ziyou yishujia shenghuo shilu [The Last Romantics of the 20th Century: Records of the Lives of Beijing’s Free Artists] (Beijing: Beijing beifang wenyi chubanshe, 1999).
- 26.
Ni, Gaige yu zhongguo dianying [Reforms and Chinese Cinema]: 102–104.
- 27.
Zhang Xianmin, Kanbujian de yingxiang [Invisible Images] (Shanghai: Shanghai sanlian shudian, 2005), 123.
- 28.
Ibid., 33.
- 29.
Paul G. Pickowicz, “Social and Political Dynamics of Underground Filmmaking in China,” in From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China, ed. Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 6–7.
- 30.
Zhongguo dianying tushi: 1905–2005 [An Illustrated History of Chinese Cinema: 1905–2005] (Beijing: Zhongguo chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2007), 747. According to Wang Jifang’s interview with Tian Zhuangzhuang, the state reacted so strongly to the independent filmmakers’ participation in the International Film Festival Rotterdam of 1994 because the festival organized a press conference calling for greater freedom for filmmakers in China. See Wang, Ershishiji zuihou de langman: Beijing ziyou yishujia shenghuo shilu [The Last Romantics of the 20th Century: Records of the Lives of Beijing’s Free Artists], 87.
- 31.
Wang Baoju, “He Jianjun: yu huibai, yu feiyang” [He Jianjun: Failed but Spirited], Zhongguo xinshidai [China New Time], no. Z1 (2002): 77.
- 32.
Another example is the banning of Lou Ye from filmmaking for five years for entering his Summer Palace (2007) to the Cannes Film Festival competition despite failing censorship. Such a ban was even less effective. Lou’s next film Spring Fever debuted in the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.
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Teng, Jinxian. “Zhongguo dianying yi jiu ba qi: Yinmu xia de sikao” [Chinese Cinema in 1987: Thoughts Off the Screen]. Dangdai dianying [Contemporary Cinema], no. 2 (1988): 1–4.
Wang, Jing. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
Wang, Jifang. Ershishiji zuihou de langman: Beijing ziyou yishujia shenghuo shilu [The Last Romantics of the 20th Century: Records of the Lives of Beijing’s Free Artists]. Beijing: Beifang wenyi chubanshe, 1999.
Wang, Baoju. “He Jianjun: yu huibai, yu feiyang” [He Jianjun: Failed but Spirited]. Zhongguo xinshidai [China New Time], no. Z1 (2002): 75–77.
Wu, Xiaoli. Jiushi niandai zhongguo dianying lun [On the Chinese Cinema of the 1990s]. Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2005.
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Zhu, Ying. Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: The Ingenuity of the System. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
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Yang, L. (2018). The Separation of Production. In: The Formation of Chinese Art Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97211-4_3
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