Beyond the ban
By Douglas Tseng
Publisher:The Straits Times - Publication Date: 19-09-2007

They have fallen out of favour with the authorities back home and been banned, yet they have risen, time and again.

Meet China's film-makers, who have made an impact worldwide and scooped up awards at international film festivals, making global critics sit up and take notice in the process.

The latest is actor-director Jiang Wen, 44, who is often feted as China's answer to Marlon Brando.

His latest film, The Sun Also Rises, opened recently at the Venice Film Festival and opens in Singapore tomorrow (Sept 20).

It is a deceptively light-hearted story about two families in a Chinese village during the Cultural Revolution. But its breezy tenor belies a darker truth - it is only Jiang's third film, and the first after he was slapped with a five-year ban on directing by the Chinese Film Bureau for his previous film, Devils On The Doorstep (2000).

The latter, a searing drama about Chinese villagers harbouring Japanese soldiers during World War II, did not fit in with the government's patriotic stance. Worse, he did not clear it with the authorities.

He started acting again only in 2002, and began directing The Sun Also Rises two years ago.

For Jiang, the long hiatus was a steep price to pay for sticking to his guns.

But he is not the first Chinese director to incur the wrath of the Chinese censors. Other rebellious film-makers like Jia Zhangke, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Lou Ye have been blacklisted, too.

What has saved them from oblivion has been the international film festival circuit, which has increasingly become a platform for Chinese directors to raise their profile and, more importantly, get their films seen by a wider audience.

Indeed, these directors are alternately seen as a source of national pride yet nuisance by the Chinese government, which is keen to improve its standing in the world.

Raymond Zhou, a Beijing-based journalist with China Daily, points out the important role that festivals like Cannes, Berlin and Venice play for these directors.

"Our own film festivals have failed to build up any reputation," he tells Life! in an e-mail interview. "In a search for a criteria for excellence, Chinese film-makers and audiences alike have turned to international competitions."

Tellingly, he adds that this yearning for external endorsement also reflects "our lack of confidence in film appreciation".

Darlings overseas

The directors' drive to showcase their films abroad has paid off handsomely.

According to a January report by China's State Administration of Radio, Film & Television (Sarft) and published in American trade magazine Variety, 27 China-made films won 44 prizes at 22 international film festivals last year.

In the previous year, 18 China-made films took home 32 prizes at 24 festivals. The report also said that 73 movies from China were released in 44 countries last year, earning about US$244 million, up 16 per cent from 2005.

But it is unclear whether these figures factored in films that were not sanctioned by the Chinese authorities.

Ironically, the film-makers' occasional guerilla strategy - showing the movies abroad without waiting for clearance - is a necessary response to the arduous screening process in China.

Since China's communist takeover in 1949, all film-makers come under the Film Bureau, which is run by Sarft. For a film to be distributed legally in the country, it must first be cleared by the censors who keep their eyes peeled for anything they consider anti-establishment or a bad influence on public morality.

But the vetting is an arduous and archaic process which does not sit well with certain film-makers, especially the auteurs from the so-called Fifth Generation, who emerged in the 1970s.

These Beijing Film Academy graduates, who include Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Chen Kaige, sparked off a movement with ground-breaking films that challenged the status quo by engaging taboo topics like the Cultural Revolution.

While their films were almost all outlawed in China, they made a splash abroad on the film festival circuit.

The stakes have been raised even higher for the current Sixth Generation of directors who are eyewitnesses to the seismic changes that have swept the country.

In fact, the urgency to capture social changes, aided by the convenience of digital film technology, has meant that films can be made on the cheap and on the run today.

China's booming economy has also helped the likes of Nanjing-born director Zhang Yuan and other film-makers to secure funds from friends, family and the private sector to buy or rent film-making equipment.

Zhang's 1993 rock documentary Beijing Bastards, which starred rocker Cui Jian, was revered as China's first independent film although it antagonised the authorities for its daring depiction of Chinese youth culture.

The film-maker was banned from producing features in 1994. Actors were told not to work with him and he was branded as a bad influence. He defiantly went on to make other underground films such as The Square (1994) and East Palace, West Palace (1996).

International routes

There are two ways for Chinese directors to get their films shown at international festivals.

First is the authorised but tedious route, such as that taken by Li Yun, 34.

Earlier this year, he was forced by the authorities to re-edit Lost In Beijing - a love story between a Beijing massage parlour owner and one of his female colleagues - five times and trim another 15 minutes before getting the green light to compete at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

It did not win but it went on to receive an Honourable Mention at the New York-based Tribeca film festival.

Second is the rogue route of making underground films. This was what Lou Ye, 42, did with Summer Palace last year. A sexually explicit love story set against the Tiananman Square incident, it took part in last year's Cannes festival without state permission.

The punishment was hefty: He was slapped with a five-year ban, and it wasn't his first time. He had been banned from making films for two years after his earlier film Suzhou River (1998), a seedy take on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo involving a man's search for a woman who looks like his former lover. It was filmed without permission.

Still, some industry observers say the ban only galvanised Lou's reputation and marketability in the international film circuit.

After all, the ban does not prevent him from making films outside China.

But some industry observers think that it is a tricky business for China film-makers to use the film festival circuit to voice their agenda.

Zhou thinks that these directors "could be playing with fire", especially when Chinese films are inadvertently appraised through politically biased lens by Western critics.

In fact, it was for this reason that Zhang Yimou withdrew his two films, Not One Less and The Road Home, from Cannes in 1999, as a response to the alleged politicisation of Chinese films at the event.

Which leads to the question: How does one know whether Chinese films win awards based solely on their artistic merit and not due to any ulterior political motive on the part of Western judges?

Just last year, Jia Zhangke's Still Life - about the impact of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the environment and people living along the Yangtze River - was a last-minute entry at the Venice Film Festival yet it managed to grab the top Golden Lion prize.

Suo Yajun, a film expert at the Communications University of China in Bejing, told the German Press Agency: "When the judges are choosing a film they might consider some political reasons, but if they decide to award it a prize, I think that is a purely artistic choice."

Singapore film critic Wong Lung Hsiang concurs and says that controversy alone does not win awards. "It is the film's artistic quality - or whether it suits the jurors' taste - that counts," he says.

Which was perhaps the case for the big winner at this year's Berlin Film Festival, Wang Quanan's Tuya's Marriage (2007).

Focusing on the impact of China's ruthless and rapid economic expansion on a Mongolian family, it had the blessings of the Beijing government and also won the coveted Golden Bear at Berlin.

Perhaps what really matters in the end is the audience's reception.

Zhang Yimou's 2002 wuxia film, Hero, which is about a conspiracy to kill an emperor, landed at No 1 in the American box office and made more than $50 million. It was state-approved and even had a film festival run before its commercial release in the US.

As New York film critic Dave Kehr tells Life! in an e-mail interview: "The film had a good success in the US, with only one or two lonely voices raising the issue of its politically reactionary content."

He concludes: "While some festival directors might be attracted to Chinese films that taunt the authorities, the public has shown no awareness of politics in the films they support."

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Its sad. Not being able to say what you want or make art the way you want.. all because it might show a negative site nation wise..

There is good in bad in everything why are nations so hell bend on making it like they are heaven and everywhere else is hell. Not everyone in a country can be happy all the time. Why cant film makers showcase the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Isnt yinyang the rule of human exsistance.

Censorship is a horrible thing. Have you guys seen TV versions of movies like Good Fellas and the like? It's a completely difference experience.