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.

A quick post about some earthquake and film related news: first off, Jia Zhangke, at the Cannes Film Festival where his new film 24 City was recently screened, lead a moment of silence for the earthquake victims and dedicated the film to the memory of the victims. The film is actually set in Chengdu, Sichuan.

Jet Li donated one million yuan and his charitable foundation, the One Foundation, has collected 28.05 million yuan and is sending supplies to Sichuan.

And lastly, a 17 member team of filmmakers is making a documentary about the earthquake. The film is provisionally entitled “Wenchuan” and they started filming on May 14, two days after the earthquake happened.

According to the Chinese media, France’s MK2 has secured theatrical rights for the new Jia Zhangke (贾樟柯) film 24 City (24城记), which is going to screen soon at the Cannes Film Festival.

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?

Wong Kar-wai is celebrating the opening of his shit movie My Blueberry Nights in the US this Friday by selling some merchandise – most notably, $95 t-shirts, $50 posters, and $25 postcards. And if you want to thank him for ripping you off in person, you’ll get your chance in New York at a fashion boutique store called Opening Ceremony, where Wong is going to be on Wednesday afternoon. We hope that someone tells him that the US is facing a recessions and that the real incomes are not increasing for the average American. $25 for a postcard? You can get four lattes in Manhattan for that price! Sheesh!We’ve read a couple of blogs that have mentioned the Hong Kong International Film Festival, but here is yet another one from a blog dedicated to Asian Cinema. There are several movies mentioned in this post that we’re really looking forward to seeing, especially Old Fish, which was mentioned in several other blogs of HKIFF participants as well.From Screen Daily we learned that Summer Palace director Lou Ye’s new film, Bitch, was one of the films selected for the fourth Cannes Atelier. This year’s Atelier features 15 projects from 14 countries and aims to help directors get financing so that they can bring their projects to completion.

Last but not least, some cinematic dessert from YouTube: the top 10 Jackie Chan stunts. Not to be missed.

Cross-posted at Shanghaiist