The Chinese film industry is marching forward carefully and optimistically despite a commecial onslaught from Hollywood.
Hero by Zhang Yimou reaped 1.45 billion yuan (about US$180 million) in box office revenue and 30 million yuan (US$3.75 million) in revenue in byproducts including DVDs, stamps and cartoons around the world.
A Wall Street Journal article said the film had ushered in a Chinese Blockbuster Age.
Chinese films are participating in the international competition by involving themselves in the international mainstream market, said professor Huang Shixian, with the Beijing Film Academy at a forum marking the centennial of Chinese film, which concluded in Beijing on Tuesday.
Since the mid-1980s, the Chinese movie industry has gone through a series of decentralizing and liberalizing reforms.
"During that time, market prices were consolidated, and the government moved decisively to eliminate restrictions on private ownership," said associate professor Hong Jun-Hao of the Department of Communication, State University of New York at Buffalo.
"Meanwhile, Hollywood pictures were permitted to be released in China. The industrial structure and market practices created and practiced by Hollywood have become the new model for the Chinese movie industry," he said.
Despite having a market share of 0.9 percent of the global box office, box office revenues in China hit 1.5 billion yuan (about US183 million) in 2004, up 60 percent over the previous year, an indication of the rejuvenation of the country's film industry, experts say.
Out of the 1.5-billion-yuan box office revenue, 55 percent was generated by homemade films, with the top three also being homemade -- Kung Fu Hustle by Hong Kong comedy star Stephen Chow (US20.3 million), House of Flying Daggers by Zhang Yimou (US18.5 million) and A World Without Thieves by Feng Xiaogang (US13.3 million).
Yet there is concern behind the prosperity, some experts attending the forum said.
Even though a new high of 212 films were made in China in 2004, most of them never received a theatrical release, said Stanley Rosen, from East Asian Studies and Department of Political Science University of Southern California.
Chinese films have taken off internationally, even conquering the notoriously parochial American market where filmgoers "historically have avoided movies with subtitles as if they were homework," Rosen quoted May 9, 2005, issue of Newsweek as saying.
"The most successful Chinese films have all been martial arts films, where language - and the disadvantages associated with subtitles - are less important than the action on the screen," he said.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon gained US208 million of box office around world, but it pocketed just 3 percent totally in the China mainland, Hong Kong and Japan, where it should have been more palatable.
The investors from Hong Kong and Taiwan saw a fiasco in their homeland as Hollywood bought the distribution at a very low price, said Huang Shixian.
All Chinese films successful in the United States were kungfu films made in a Hollywood style, which easily leads to a simplified understanding of Chinese culture and turns China into a manufacturing base of a type of Hollywood films, Hong said.
Zhang Yimou failed to secure the public release of his urban comedy Keep Cool in the United States, where Feng Xiaogang retrieved just US$820 in a week's showing of his Big Shots Funeral.
Chinese critics worried that Feng's satire may elude the western audiences owing to the language and cultural differences.
A New York Times review said that Feng's film offered "a vastly different view of Chinese society than most Western moviegoers used to seeing."
In addition, the capital convergence at renowned filmmakers has hindered new directors.
"New directors have to change their creating ideas to adapt to investors sometimes," said Lu Chuan, a Chinese up-and-coming director, known for his Kekexili Mountain Patrol, about saving the Tibetan antelope from ruthless poachers.
According to Rosen, the strategy of the Chinese film industry to compete with Hollywood is to continue to do co-productions and to partner with Hollywood distributors to promote their films globally.
(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2005)
