The spirit of '45

Every nation has its own spirit and personality, something people may complain all the time but acutally be pround of deep inside. As a foerign film student, I am glad Ken Loach presents us a unique perspective about this country, a era-changing period of time from the year 1945.
One of the greatest director in this century Tim Burton once said:“Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you. And that's why we're all interested in movies- those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it's actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.” This is all this documentry gave me, full of emotion which is enough to affect one who doesn't know about the history and politics well.
Director Ken Loach has used film from Britain’s regional and national archives, alongside sound recordings and contemporary interviews to create a rich political and social narrative. Ken casts his eye on a 1945, when all the suffers ended after the war and people started topersue a better society and environment.

A&Q by director Ken Loach

Reference: Can China's film industry ever rival Hollywood? (BBC News)

The harbourfront promenade modelled on Hollywood's walk of fame pays tribute to Chinese movie celebrities.

But none of the dozen or so Western visitors checking out the statue of kung fu star Bruce Lee and the hand prints of Jacky Chan could name a Chinese film they had seen or enjoyed.

Swiss flight attendant Susanne Zehnder, enjoying a walk during a stopover in Hong Kong, said she found the Chinese films shown on her flights confusing.

"It's not just the language. The plot, the mentality is different to the films I know," she said.

China's film industry is the world's third largest, both in terms of the number of films produced and box office takings.

But, with a few high-profile exceptions, its films have not made an impact on the world stage and are struggling to take on the challenges of Hollywood productions at home.

Continue reading the main story

Top grossing movies in China in 2011

• Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon $169m
• Kung Fu Panda 2: $95m
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: $73m
• Beginning of the Great Revival: $67m
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2: $65m

Source: Artisan Gateway

It is a matter of concern for China, which is becoming more assertive in its attempts to export its own view of the world, having seen the "soft power" prowess of US films and television shows.

"Chinese filmmakers and the Chinese governmental groups that oversee the film industry recognise that film and story-telling can be a powerful tool to introduce Chinese people and culture to the outside world," says Rance Pow, founder of Artisan Gateway, a Shanghai-based film and cinema consultancy.

"And that's something they'd like to encourage," he adds.

Once better known for long-winded propaganda films and poorly-produced historical epics, many Chinese filmmakers are improving their craft and adopting Hollywood-style production values.

After more than a decade of break-neck economic growth, there is also more money to be spent on film production.

Chinese actors like Fan Bing Bing are beginning to build profiles outside China

Last year's martial-arts movie, Let the Bullets Fly, and Aftershock, the story of a family separated in the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, were commercial and critical hits in China.

There are also a growing number of art-house dramas and documentaries made without state backing, but these are sometimes banned in China and only feature on the international festival circuit.

Tough sell

Many of China's biggest movie hits owe at least some of their success to acting and directing talent from Taiwan and Hong Kong, which has a long film-making tradition, particularly of action movies.

It is a trend that started with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the 2000 martial-arts movie and the most internationally commercially successful Chinese film to date.

"Chinese filmmakers are coming into their own but the learning curve has been accelerated by partnerships and co-investment with outside groups that are already expert in their field," says Mr Pow.

Despite their increased sophistication, Chinese films are a hard sell outside their home market, says Tim Kwok of Cinema Asia Releasing, which distributes Asian-language films in North America.

Chinese tourists flock to Hong Kong's Avenue of Stars, which pays tribute to Chinese movie stars

A lack of appetite for local-language films among young audiences, poor marketing and a shortage of bankable Chinese actors are just some of the challenges facing Chinese films, he says.

"There's a lack of younger Chinese stars that travel internationally. People like Jacky Chan and Jet Li, Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh are now in their fifties."

"Also, Chinese movies are in some ways being held back because Chinese censorship rules mean that edgy subjects such as sex… just aren't kosher," Mr Kwok adds.

In 2010, 47 domestic Chinese films were released overseas but that number could increase following a new venture by two of China's largest film production companies.

Last month, Huayi Brothers Media and Bona Film Group acquired a stake in start-up China Lion Film Distribution, with a view to increasing the movies it releases in North America.

Growth potential

Domestically, Chinese movies face tough competition from Hollywood, which now regards China as a major market.

China's box office takings totalled $1.6bn (£1bn) last year, up 62% from 2009. And with only 6,300 cinema screens compared with 40,000 in the US, potential for future growth is huge.

Andy Lau starred in this year's top-grossing Chinese-language film

Foreign movies like Avatar made up 55% of ticket sales and dominated the top 10 even though the Chinese government limits the release of wholly foreign-made films to 20 a year and gives preferential treatment to high-profile domestic releases.

So far in 2011, four of the top five draws have been Hollywood productions.

This year's top-grossing Chinese-language film, the state-backed extravaganza Beginning of the Great Revival, which details the period between 1911, when China's last dynasty ended, and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, boasted a $12m budget and a cast of 178 Chinese-language speaking actors such as Andy Lau and Chow Yun-Fat.

Reports said that state companies compelled their employees to see the film and cinemas pushed back competing titles to make way for the movie.

However, Kung Fu Panda 2, released around the same time, ultimately proved the more popular film, irking some Chinese artists and scholars, who called for a boycott, saying the animation "twisted Chinese culture and serves as a tool to 'kidnap' the mind of the Chinese people'".

Back on Hong Kong's Avenue Of Stars, Chinese tourists pose for pictures and scout out familiar names with the same glee and fervour as any fan on Hollywood Boulevard.

But some industry watchers remain sceptical that the country's moviegoers will be able to resist Hollywood's tried and tested marketing machine.

"I don't think the Chinese movie industry is producing enough variety of films to fend off the Hollywood invasion," says Mr Kwok, at Cinema Asia Releasing.

"In China, there is a lack of commercial directors and a lack of movie stars."

"Without the quota system, I just think the industry would be taken over by Hollywood films."

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15691218

Film analysis: Red sorghum (1987)

Red sorghum is a masterpiece of the Chinese ‘5^th generation’ directors Yimou Zhang, meanwhile it won the very first golden bear from the Berlin film festival in the year 1988 for the temporary Chinese film industry. Adapted by the first 2 chapters of Mo Yan’s novel ( Mo Yan, the famous novel writer, won the Nobel Prize for literature last year), “It is a tribute of life in the wild sorghum field by the language of film” the director describe his first directing work to the reporter. The main character ‘ Juer’ in this film is a significance which inspired the following filmmakers and script writers of creating more and more brave, awaken Chinese female features.

Humanistic solicitude is the eternal subject for contemporary Chinese writers and filmmakers, especially the concern about female. Mo depicted his ideal female as the color red—hot, bright and unforgettable like the power of life. In the background of the Japanese invasion around year 1930, the film revolves around the life of Juer starts from the day her father exchanges her to a 50-year-old leprous business man with a donkey. Instead of being subordinated to her fate, she fights with a scissors in her hand, resist this consummation of marriage until her husband be murdered 3 days after. “…these two characters, gender liberation (her fight against feudal standards) and patriotic leadership ( her resistance against the Japanese), are paralleled, with economic enlightenment, thrown in for good measure.” [1] She takes over her dead husband’s red sorghum wine business and achieves economic independence. When the Japanese solders intrude into the village she lives, slaughter and skin innocent peasants, she is the one stands out and plan the revenge, end up being shot down in the wild red sorghum filed. “Forefront in its portrayal of desire and sexuality, the film broke the code of modesty that governed the conduct of a virtuous woman that had been dominant on screen in the previous decades.” [2] Juer is a sign to national awakening, a new start of a age and a perfect, classic goddess on the screen. By creating Juer, the director Zhang achieve his goal of focusing on woman’s desire, identifying female aesthetic and establishing a subject position for woman as cinematic spectators.  

Reference

[1] China into film—frame of reference in contemporary Chinese Cinema (1999) 791.430951 SIL

Jerome Silbergeld

 

[2]http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/coming-attraction-asia-society-screens-red-sorghum-based-mo-yans-novel ( 28/02/2013)

 

Bibliography

Woman through the lense: gender and nation in a century of Chinese cinema—Shuqin cui

http://tech.mit.edu/V109/N13/red.13a.html

Reference reading: Bazin’s film theory and Chinese film—“ The cinema is the truth 24 times per second”

André Bazin was the most important film critics in 1970s. In his book “What is cinema” he put forward the “mummy complex theory of art and film”.  “…The process might reveal that the origin of painting and sculpture there lays a mummy complex. The religion of ancient Egypt, aimed against death, saw survival as depending on the continued existing of the corporeal body. Thus, by providing a defense against the passage of time it satisfied a basic psychological need in man, for death is but the victory of time. To preserve, artificially, his bodily appearance is to snatch it from the flow of time, to stow it away neatly, so to speak, in the hold of life. It was naturally, therefore, to keep up appearances in the face of the reality death by preserving fresh flesh and bone.” Film, as a product of times and technology, started as a purpose of preserving the memories and emotions which we treasured. Nowadays, with the technology develops, more and more fantastic special effects are being able to add in the post-production stage, make it possible for us to see those we cannot see in the real life. But still, film is a reflection of our inner world. For Bazin, ‘Everything that is filmed once was in reality;’ it is the cinema

that brought images back to life.

Look back to the history of Chinese film industry, from the ‘Goodness’ (1934), ‘Crossroad’ (1937), ‘Angle on the street’ (1937) , Chinese films were started and based on the suffering of poverty, starvation and memories of wars. It more or less set the tone for the further filmmakers. Different from the Hollywood, the Chinese filmmakers in more than 60 decades barely took an interest in the super hero topic or action comedy, they focused on the painful, vast and hazy life of people in each particular period of time in the mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. They embodied the strong sense of social responsibility, historical mission and the spirit of humanity. Today China becomes the 2^nd biggest market of film industry all around the world, the multiplexes are mushrooming in this country, yet it remains its unique film style and identity in the great complexity of world film industry which is already be ruled by Hollywood for years.

Instead of the overuse of montage, Bazin’s theory pointed out another direction for the Chinese filmmakers. “By blending history with fiction or legend, the personal with the political, in a narrative pattern characterized by a bipolar structure that is typically Chinese” 3. These features built up the realism of Chinese films.3 In the terms of filming techniques, outdoor scene with natural set, candid photography, non-professional performance, full-length shot and live recording were widely used on the films in the 1970s to 1980s, represented by the ‘ 5^th generation’ of Chinese directors’ Yimou Zhang, Kaige Chen and so on. Provided the audiences fully immersive, totally convincing virtual reality. 

Film Techniques and skills-- camera settings

As a filmmaker, especially at the university study stage, it's necessary to grasp of basic filming making techniques and skills to produce a piece of work with low budget and limited crew . Here are some sum ups of my reading this week.

1. About frame rate: Although the difference can hardly be observed by eyes when broadcasting in defferent video format, frame rate is considered as a important figue to produce a ' professional' video footage. Nowadays most video recorders and DSLRs offer us choices of frame rates in different filmming conditions, 24p, is normally the best for films. Compare to the PAL( 25fps--TV programme standards for most of the countries), this rate gives a relatively ' slow ', story telling atmosphere. To film sports games or other scenarios with fast moving items, high frame rate is needed to aviod motion blur or stroboflash.

2.About light: a good lighting set can make a distinct improvement in regard of picture quality, color, contrast and saturation . Last 3 weeks we took lighting tutorial sessions in Brodway cinema about indoor lighting set thory and practice of portrait and environments. With the right direction and color temperature of the lights ( 5500k for daylight and 3100k for artificial light) we can produce video footages which match the condition we need.

If film in outdoor environment, camera setting can be the key of success. ND filter must be shut down, turn the F stops in the scale of F1.2--F5.6， Shutter speed 1/30s--1/50s, turn picture style to no contrast and turn up the ISO ( normally not higher than 1600 otherwise the picture quality will be low and full of noises). Proper filmming locations  with streetlights or billboard light can benefit to it as well. If nessecary, Turn up the 'Gain' figure on video camera. The color and lighting can be modified via 'color correction' and 'color granted' funtion of editing softwares to suit the needs.

3. About microphones when filming: Different types of microphones is required in different filming situation. The internal mic in cameras is handy but not ideal for quality because the noise of camera will be recorded at the same time. Thus, we need external mics or seperate sound recorder when filming.

Film case research: Almost a love story (1996)

‘Almost a love story’ was a huge success in the year 1996 which won 16 major film awards in Hong Kong and the mainland China. With the historical background of the reunification of Hong Kong, the director Peter Chan depicted a heart-broken love story between two lonely and helpless young people, and, more importantly, conveyed a manifestation of attitudes towards life, love and fortune in that particular period of time.   

 

Xiaojin Li comes to Hong Kong along from the mainland China with his dream: work hard, make a lot of money and marry his fiancée Ting, yet he can neither speak Cantonese nor English, life in Hong Kong is not a fantasy as he imagines before. Whilst he is seeking a job, he gets to know a beautiful girl Qiao who works in the McDonalds. Qiao, as an immigrant worker from mainland China as well, has a much bigger dream than Li—become a real ‘Hong Konger’ and be respected by the local residence. Life is harsh and they gradually become a strong support to each other. No surprise, they fall in love in the bustling metropolis. As many other romantic stories go, good time doesn’t last long in this film. The relationship perplexed Qiao because she is far from reconciled to what Li is able to offer, she realizes she will never get comfy and steady life in this island with this man. She chooses to leave, marry an ugly gang leader who is end up dying on the street. Years later, they meet in New York again, story ends.

 

Analysis

 

Tragedy and base on reality

 

“…by blending history with fiction or legend, the personal with the political, in a narrative pattern characterized by a bipolar structure that is typical Chinese.” 1 Different from the fever of action, comedy and Rags to Riches topics in the western film industry, Chinese filmmakers pay more attention on the nonentities such as peasants, factory workers and poor people who are painful and struggling for a better life and happiness, especially in a particular historical period of time like world war two and political upheaval or events (Hong Kong reunited).  In the year 1905, the first Chinese film “Dingjun Mountain” was produced in Shanghai which was adapted by a traditional Peking Opera, revolving around a story of brave Chinese soldiers fight against the invasion of the Japanese. Thus, the key tune of Chinese film has been determined. In this film ‘ Almost a love story’, the confusion of Li and Qiao was once lived in everyone’s mind— Happiness only exists when you have milk and bread in your blanket, but for the people in mainland China of the entire 80’s, poverty and starvation were the main society issue that was impossible to ignore. One of the best shot in this film, in my opinion, is at the beginning, when Li first stepped on the land of Hong Kong and takes an escalator with a lot of luggage with him, he stands towards a beam of strong sunlight, tired and lonely. The scene was shown in black and white for a strong contrast, full of bitter and sorrow.  

 

                    Teresa Teng The most important clue goes through this Chinese classic film is a song named “sweet” by one of the significant singer Teresa Teng (1953-1995). It is a soft, cheerful love song which brings positive energy to young people for a whole generation. Xiaojun and Qiao start to know each other because they both love this song, they sell Teresa’s albums on the street, and one of the best memories, Qiao sits on Xiaojun’s bike, singing “ sweet” together. This tune, in my opinion, is the symbol of the emotions between this two, furthermore, of all lost people in the time. Most of classic Hollywood films have always worked to men as the active and powerful heroes while the women they love are always waiting to be rescued. Chinese filmmakers more likely to focus on the inner world of women—they might not smart, talented, sometimes they get themselves in trouble, but they are not as weak as we imagine. In this film, Qiao is the one with ideals and desires, the director depicted a perfect poetry for “ woman in new century” .

 



Lighting： face light tyoes

broad light

butterfly light

loop light

Rambrandt light

short light

 

                                                                           split light