China Film Journal

Earlier this year, we prefaced our interview of a rising star in film with the provocative title, The World is Not Enough: Has Jia Zhangke Permanently Left the Art House?

I should hope not. From my view Stateside it seems that Jia Zhangke (贾樟柯) has just arrived. After all, I had been waiting since 2006 for the U.S. release of Still Life (Sanxia Haoren: literally, “The Good People of Three Gorges”). So I waited. And waited. And wouldn’t you know, I waited.

Still Life made its American premiere in January 2008 at New York’s IFC Center. It reached the West Coast in April, at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and a month later, showed for a week at one of the Lumiere Theatres in the Bay Area. In other words, an art house. So is Jia leaving the art house, just as he has entered it?

I think two different meanings of that phrase at play. One is subjective, about the film itself: serious, often experimental and avant-garde, produced independently, with a singular vision (i.e. that of an auteur). One is objective, the circumstances in which the film and by extension, the filmmaker, is received: where it plays and what audience.

The term “art house” or “art film” turns out to be a uniquely American one, due to the monopoly of commercially-oriented Hollywood films in American theaters (and abroad), leaving acknowledged serious films domestic and international limited to certain theaters. They could be specialty film centers such as the IFC in New York or Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, or repertory theaters that show classics for a day and new releases for a week, two on popular demand. In the suburbs, they could be the occasional chain-operated theater set aside for niche movies, or the single screen reserved at the 30-plex theater.

An independent film with strong prospects may open at several dozen screens. For example, a Jane Austen adaptation starring Emma Thompson (and a not-so-famous Kate Winslet). Sense and Sensibility opened at 70 screens in 1995. That sounds like a lot, but with nearly 300 million people and 400 metropolitan areas, it clearly did not show within driving distance of many Americans. In contrast, The Dark Knight opened at over 4000 screens in the US. The art film’s initial unqualified success did allow it to expand to several hundred screens, thus “leaving the art house”.

A more recent example is the phenomenon known as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Buoyed by the art house successes of Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm, Ang Lee’s film was able to open at . . . 16 screens!! Two reasons come to mind. Foreign language films have smaller potential audiences, and so they started smaller. Also, they opened smaller at the start of December to build up to Christmas season.

Well Christmas came and went, and a month later it was playing at close to 200 screens, so it was bumped to 700 screens for another three weeks. But wait, it wasn’t going away. In fact those 700 screens were packed. So well after the holiday season, Crouching Tiger played at 1200 screens, then 1700…until it reached an unheard-of 2000 screens for a foreign language film. The punctuated equilbrium of this theatrical progression is fascinating to chart. It appears the powers that be expected such a film only needed 173 screens when it opened those screens, and when it exceeded all expectations, took some time before it made non-art screens available to the wire-fu epic. Put another way, it was the Obama of the cinema world.

At its theatrical peak, in February 2008, Still Life played at two screens. The World, his previous international success, hit three screens in the US. Of course, none of these record film festival screenings, which are lovely feathers in the cap but do little for accessibility. Seattle on May 23 and Austin on October 12? No thanks. Given the 4000+ screens available in the US, it seems even the proliferation of international films can find their, um, niche in a physical art house. Perhaps Netflix and soon the Internet will render inconsequential the movie bottleneck in the theaters. But the reviews, the buzz, the “event-ness” of a film today accompany generally just its theatrical release.

There is another world, one that falls somewhere between the visibility of repertory theaters and the singularity of film festivals. That’s the art museum world. At some point art museums decided to show international films as part of its regular exhibitions. Perhaps it’s an extension of their experimental film and video showings, or as a long awaited acknowledgment of narrative film as art with a capital “A”. While each film shows for a day or two, the program (often focusing on one filmmaker) may last weeks, giving the curious time and opportunity to taste some of the oeuvre.

The San Francisco Bay Area is fortunate to have several such venues for film. This month, SF Museum of Modern Art is showing the film series Rediscovering the Fourth Generation as part of its exhibit on Chinese contemporary art. Films include Wu Tian Ming’s River Without Buoys, Xie Fei’s Black Snow, and Huang Shuqin’s Woman Demon Human.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts tends to focus on experimental and documentary type films. Next month it premieres Fengming: A Chinese Memoir by Wang Bing, which showed at last year’s Cannes. Here’s the Variety review. He Fengming survived “anti-rightist” persecutions for decades and lived to tell her three-hour tale.

Across the Bay, the Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive functions more like a stand-alone film center. Though nominally tied with the art museum’s contemporary Chinese art exhibit, the PFA had an extraordinary program this month. Unknown Pleasures: The Films of Jia Zhangke allowed Bay Area audiences to see for the first time “the quartet of beautifully constructed, profoundly astute examinations of a changing China”, as the Village Voice called Pickpocket (Xiao Wu), Platform, Unknown Pleasures, and The World.

That series has ended but is followed up this weekend with a four-day, five-film seriesI Love Beijing: The Films of Ning Ying , capped by a “master class” from Ning Ying (宁瀛) herself. But wait, there’s more! November features Mahjong: New Independent Chinese Cinema, a sample of 21st century visions from Beijing, Sanxia, and Anyang to an art house, I mean art museum, near you.

Think Rocky V, but during the Olympics. Jackie Chan, 54, will engage in some kind of fighting? boxing? kung fu? exhibition against Tszyu, 38, a welterweight boxer from Russia and former Olympian. However, as this is China’s Olympics, we suspect that, like in the movies, Chan will triumph over the white man in the final, climactic scene. If he’s in top form, he might be able to rescue some Ming vases and other priceless artifacts of Chinese culture at the same time! The exhibition has been agreed upon by both parties and would be set for August 22 or 23, depending on whether or not it gets final IOC approval.

Ang Lee’s next film is going to be a film adaptation of the book Taking Woodstock, a autobiography/memoir by Eliot Tiber, one of the guys that organized that world-shaking festival in the summer of 69. It’s also the story of a young, Jewish, and (then) closeted gay kid finding his way in the late 1960s gay scene of Greenwich Village, where he hobnobs with with artists and cultural icons. Lee said that Tiber walked up to him somewhere when he was promoting Lust, Caution in the US and handed him the book. He found it so moving that he decided it would become his next film project.

Last but not least, Jia Zhangke (贾樟柯）is the only Chinese film director to make it into the official competition at Cannes, with his new film The Story of 24 City (24城记）about the changes in the lives of factory women in the 1970s.

• Ang Lee, in a recent trip to Vancouver BC, talks with the mayor and Vancouverites about a proposed bill that would deny tax money to filmmakers whose content does not reflect Canadian values. On a recent trip to LA, Lee was asked about how new “President” Ma Yingjiu (馬英九）of that province which has been, is, and always will be part of China, will affect the movie bidness there, to which he replied that this is just a start and that there’s a long road ahead for the Taiwanese movie industry. To really flourish, Taiwan cannot rely on their market alone, but have to consider the mainland Chinese market.
• The Forbidden Kingdom, that first and but unfortunately not last collaboration between Jet Li and Jackie Chan, has opened in North America. Some people thought it sucked.
• SARFT states that China’s film policy will continue to improve and move forwards. (Sorry, we were feeling link starved).
• A blog post brings up a point that we had heard about months ago regarding Jia Zhangke’s movie The Story of 24 City 《24城记》, which is that the Chinese name of the film is identical to the name of a housing development (24 City), whose developer is also one of the film’s investors.
• Speaking of Jia Zhangke, he’s also been in the news recently because of the upcoming 61st Cannes Film Festival. There are four Chinese films that might make it into the main competition; aside from Jia’s film, there are films from Wang Quanan (王全安),director of Tuya’s Wedding, Ying Liang (应亮), and Liu Fendou. The official selection was delayed and will be announced on April 23.
• While trawling through email alerts we found mention of a movie called An American in China that won some award at the 2008 San Luis Obispo film festival. Here’s a blurb from that report:
  

  Twenty-two year old David is floundering – stuck in that lazy period between college and “what am I going to do with the rest of my life?” Even David’s best friend, Sha (Anthony Montgomery) and his younger sister Kendra (Alice Greczyn) are concerned about his aimless attitude. (Alice Greczyn will be co-starring with James Marsden (X-MEN, THE NOTEBOOK, 27 DRESSES), in the upcoming film SEX DRIVE directed by Sean Anders.) David’s parents (Michael Gross and Priscilla Barnes) pressure him to find a direction. They want him to go to China to source factories for the family’s business, and David eventually does give into his father’s urging to “go east young man.”

Has anyone heard of this film before? Anyone seen it and want to review it?

Fans of French film might be interested to know that Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 classic Le Cercle Rouge (starring Alain Delon, Andre Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonte and Yves Montand) is being remade in Hollywood by none other than Hong Kong action auteur Johnnie To.

What’s even more weird is that Chow Yun-fat and Orlando Bloom are attached to the project.

Malaysia’s The Star reports that in Chen Shi-Zheng’s Dark Matter the film about the Chinese physics grad student in the US that gets homicidal. The production lost their first actor, which is when Meryl Streep suggested to the director that they get Quinn instead — but the catch was that he was almost too good-looking and charismatic for a physics professor. We guess they were looking for someone more shriveled, perhaps paraplegic?

The Taiwanese film What on Earth Have I Done Wrong?(情非得已之生存之道) (dir. by Doze Niu) originally had a cameo role by Chinese actress and all-around hottie Zhou Xun (周迅). She even donated some of the money she won from the Golden Horse acting prize to the production, but her part was, in the end, deleted from the film. We have not seen the film on DVD here yet, but it seems it was just released in Taiwan on April 11, so might not make it here you know, for another three hours or so.

Ang Lee is coming out with an autobiography this October, and some reports claim that in this book, Lee states that although many women seem to like his films and admire the depictions of women in the films, that he doesn’t really understand or have much interest in women. We’d probably have to read more of the book to know what context this statement occurs in (there’s more in the report itself, but you’d still want to read the entire book), but we’re sure that this will provide more proof for those into the Chinese rumor mill who believe that Lee is a closeted homosexual.

Director Ang Lee, perhaps frustrated and angered by the recent ban of Tang Wei and spate of criticism leveled against his movie, has reacted by publcily defending Tang Wei — as well a good director ought to, protege or not.

However, in so doing he made a statement that hasn’t gone over well in the blogosphere. He said that “not watching Lust, Caution would be shameful.”

Here is what the above article quotes Lee as saying:

　李安說：“戲中那些激情場面，是演技最精彩的部分。我教過無數演員，都沒有那麼高水準。這些是好私人的表演，是這部戲的重點，主導了整部電影，不去看才羞恥。” [emphasis mine]

The article then discusses Lee’s remarks in that typically specious avuncular “tsk, tsk” officialese tone that we all know so well, that patronizing tone mustered by those who will live to their last day without ever becoming aware of their own incorrigible mediocrity. The writer is the calm voice of reason, the artist is petulant and extreme. In a pluralistic society like China, everyone has different tastes and interests, no need to be saying what we should or shouldn’t watch, what is “shameful” and what is not. There’s no need to point out the doublespeak — in film and the arts, SARFT and their ilk reserve the final right to decide who’s on the pluralism party list and who gets bounced.

The article then claims that statemetns like Lee’s are sound-bytes that the attention-starved people in the movie biz do to get more publicity for themselves:

當前，影視界或藝術界的一些人，太急功近利或浮躁了。總喜歡發出一些“怪論”、“偏論”，或引起人們的注意，或顯示自己的與眾不同。其實，那不過是一種“很傻很天真很幼稚”的表現。

This is then criticized as being naive and immature. The author says that some artists (obviously meaning Ang Lee in this context) are so obsessed with “immediate profits and gains” that they have to make “strange and provocative statements” in order for that to happen. It seems highly ironic, the terms they use to describe this — “怪論” (strange arguments/statements) and “偏論” (biased/skewed/provocative arguments or statements) — because to us the best instance of such statements can be found by attending government press conferences, political meetings (Party Congresses), or maybe by bringing a mirror into wherever these writers work.

It’s not that we’re fans of Ang Lee’s movies, and even though he’s publicly pitted himself against the SARFT-Goliath, he’s no culture-hero. He is morally obliged, we think, to stand up and say something, but not everything he has said has been right, or even helpful. The issue of “shame” should never have come up in the first place, because that’s precisely how SARFT wants you to think about Lust, Caution. And they certainly don’t want you to notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand that editorials like this one use to distort the issue, making it about Ang Lee’s big mouth instead of about the real issue — China’s puzzling lack of a film-ratings system and the government’s anachronistic role as the cultural nanny of the general population.

This hypocrisy is gloriously displayed on the last line: “李安應為自己的話道歉”，這是許多網友的呼聲，不知我們的李大導演可否注意到？是否懂得“不敬人者，人恒不敬之”的道理？Roughly translated this means that Ang Lee ought to apologize for his own statements, doesn’t he know that ‘he who does not respect others will never gain the respect of others.” When is China going to start respecting artists and filmmakers, and more importantly, the general population as adult, mature, consumers of cultural products? If the Chinese government is not going to respect its own cultural producers, why should anyone in the world who gives a shit about art and culture respect the Chinese government?

Technorati Tags: ang lee, lust, caution, china, media, 媒體, 中國, 色戒, 李安

Tang Wei (汤唯), the female star of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, has been blacklisted from all mainland Chinese press. However, this doesn’t just coverher appearances in print media and TV commercials, but extends to the participation of her and other people involved in that movie in awards events, film festivals, etc. This means that you won’t catch her on the cover of Elle magazine again anytime soon.The Viagra seems to be working for the people at SARFT, since they’ve decided to reassert censorship guidelines in a March 7 statement:

In a statement titled “Reassertion of Censorship Guidelines” and dated March 7, SARFT said that, on Monday, it informed all major film and broadcast entities and governing bodies that it was renewing prohibitions on “lewd and pornographic content” and content that “show promiscuous acts, rape, prostitution, sexual intercourse, sexual perversity, masturbation and male/female sexual organs and other private parts.” However, the public notice, posted on SARFT’s Web site, did not specifically mention “Lust” or Tang.      

Of course, they did have some issues with Lust, Caution in particular, what with the way it glorified traitors and maligned an entire nation and race of people. Here are some of the charges, in Chinese:

电影上映后，负面批评不少，认为恶搞抗日史实，亵渎抗日先烈，宣扬汉奸，损害国家荣誉，践踏民族尊严，危害社会公德，颠倒真、善、美与假、恶、丑，混淆了正义与非正义的基本性质；看完电影，遭受巨大精神痛苦，民族自豪感、民族自尊感遭受严重挫伤。      

In addition to the usual malarkey about the distortion of history, the glorification of traitors, and the trampling of national dignity, there’s also this bit about how “after watching this film” the (indoctrinated) audience would “feel great spiritual pain”. The Hollywood Reporter article mentions that Tang’s Ponds cream contract, worth a pretty penny, will be adversely affected.Technorati Tags: china, chinese, SARFT, cinema, film, Tang wei, lust caution, anglee, ang lee, ban, censorship, blacklist, actors, actress, movie