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They used to make a spectacular scene. About once a month,
peasants from all nearby villages would flock to a mobile cinema
for a black-and-white film. The early birds would sit comfortably
on a stool or a brick, latecomers would have to stand on their
tiptoes or climb up a tree.
Today, however, the slack film market, particularly in China's
vast countryside, threatens to put a damper on the country's
centennial film industry glitzy with big-budget blockbusters.
As the seaside resort of Sanya in the southernmost island
province of Hainan makes last minute preparations for the 14th Golden
Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, Chinese filmmakers
have to face up to the fact that many farmers in China's least
developed regions have no access at all to movies. "Film" hardly
exists in the lexicon of many rural children, whose fuzzy
understanding of the word is based on distant memories of their
parents and grandparents.
In better-off rural regions, townships and counties for
instance, repetitions of the same antiquated films draws few
audiences, but the blockbusters popular among urbanites are often
far beyond the affordability and comprehension of rural
dwellers.
Even in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, fewer people go to
the cinema nowadays because they can buy cheap VCDs or DVDs, or
download films from the Internet. Cinemas often charge 50 yuan
(US$6) or 100 yuan (US$12) at theaters.
A recent survey shows that an average Chinese goes to the cinema
once every five years. "It's a matter of life and death for the
film industry," many critics say.
Past glory
Li Yunshan, a veteran cinema worker in Fenyang of north China's
Shanxi Province, still recalls with excitement how the villagers
revered him in the 1970s.
"The news of a film would send everyone screaming with laughter.
If a village had 1,000 people, more than 800 were sure to come,"
said Li, now a self-employed film projector. "Days before the film
was due, the anxious audience would come to me with pleas."
The former film projector used to travel from village to village
and was treated with the best possible food wherever he went.
Huang Xuze said he could never forget 1982's Shaolin
Temple because it caused such a tumult in the mountain village
of his hometown in the northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous
Region.
"Each family was bickering over who should stay home -- we
didn't use to lock our houses back then," he said. "Young girls who
were told to stay cried their eyes out. The village auditorium was
already overcrowded with people, but still, the ticket collectors
couldn't stop the long queues from pushing in."
Films were more than a means of entertainment to peasants who
relied on the movement of the sun, rather than a clock, to decide
when to get up or go to bed. "It was an important social occasion
for villagers to gossip, for young girls to date their beaus and
for kids to stay up late," said Wang Jinmei, a villager from
Ya'ergou village in Yanchi county of Ningxia. "Everyone would feel
stronger and more energetic the next morning."
Ever since three reels of silent film were shot in a courtyard
of a Beijing photography shop of a Peking opera star doing
Dingjun Mountain in 1905, Chinese cinema has gone through
successive peaks and troughs.
It reached a climax in 1977, right after the "Cultural
Revolution" (1966-1976), when movie attendance across the country
reached a record 29.3 billion.
Chinese film has been on a downward spiral ever since. In 2004,
a year touted by media pundits as a "bright spot," attendance was
200 million, a mere 0.6 percent of the 1977 level.
Audience neglected
The forthcoming 14th Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film
Festival slated for Nov. 9-12 is said to feature "noble, elegant
and sublime" styles of art and culture, with attendance of several
hundred movie stars from home and abroad and 21 foreign classic
films to be shown.
The festival, which presents Golden Rooster Awards and the
Hundred Flowers Awards in alternate years to outstanding films and
artists in China, is the most prestigious and influential film
event in China.
But in reflection of the social disparity in Chinese film
culture, the festival is set to become a feast for the haves as the
city chosen for the event is the prime film market and highbrows
are the target audience.
So what about the 9 million farmers that make up the absolute
majority of the Chinese population and promise a gold mine for the
movie industry?
"If every farmer spends 10 yuan (US$1.2) to see a film once
every year, it makes 9 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion)," said Han
Sanping, general manager of China Film Group Co..
Han's company produces about 40 films each year, few of which
entertain rural audiences.
Ironically, films based on the countryside and the peasants'
lives are often successful. Warm Spring produced by Shanxi
Provincial Film Studio, for example, drew more than 4 million
viewers nationwide and made 4 million yuan in net profit, a
200-percent return.
"The root of Chinese film is in the countryside, which offers a
gold mine of resources," said Han. "We should target the domestic
audience and build a solid foundation at home before we elbow into
the world market."
Children's film: Harry Potter type
desired
Another audience demographic neglected by mainstream Chinese
cinema is children, which is why, overshadowing nearly all domestic
children's films, the message owl, the flying sweeper and the
visionless mantle in Harry Potter have fascinated Chinese
children the same way Monkey King did their parents
decades ago.
"The success of Harry Potter has set many Chinese
filmmakers thinking," said Prof. Wang Quangen, a children's
literature specialist with Beijing Normal University. "We should
learn to activate the children's imagination and touch them with
the subject matter."
Industry analysts say climbing costs, high risk and uncertain
box office prospects have discouraged many filmmakers from
producing children's films. "Besides, many parents are unconfident
in domestic films and think they are merely tedious preaching,"
said Liu Jun, a researcher with the Beijing Film Academy.
As a noted film researcher, Liu is often invited to
presentations of new films. "We see only one or two children's
films out of every 20 or 30 new films -- and again, these are often
foreign movies."
It's not that China is not good at shooting children's films,
according to Liu. The Mystery Valley, for example, is just
like a Chinese version of Home Alone, but has been denied
by many big theaters. After all, it doesn't promise very high box
office revenues."
Industry insiders say it costs 2 to 3 million yuan (US$246,000
to 370,000) to produce a children's film whereas box office
revenues are only between 300,000 and 400,000 yuan (US$37,000 to
49,000).
According to Zhang Hongsen, vice-director of the State Film
Administration, the Chinese government is planning to nurture
children's blockbusters by encouraging top playwrights and
filmmakers to produce children's films, and offering rewards in
line with the quality and box office incomes of their products.
(Xinhua News Agency November 8, 2005)
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