Chinese director Jia Zhangke, who won the Golden Lion for Best
Film at the Venice Film Festival with his Still Life, has
warned the fixation with big budget blockbusters could erode
creativity in China's film industry.
Jia said he hoped more Chinese films would portray the lives of
common people, rather than being just commercial extravaganzas.
He denied he was against making commercially-oriented films, but
he objected to the "money worship" attitude in producing
blockbusters.
"The model for those commercial films is to gain huge profits by
pinning hopes on big investments, which will remove creativity and
imagination from Chinese films," said Jia Zhangke.
Jia was speaking after the box office takings of Still
Life crept into just five figures in sharp contrast to Zhang
Yimou's latest epic story Curse of the Golden Flower,
which so far collected 150 million yuan (US$19.23 million). Both
films opened on Dec. 14.
"Blockbusters are powerful because they attract more investment,
big stars and channels to advertise," Jia said, citing the example
of Zhang Yimou's Hero released in 2002, which holds
China's box office record with 250 million yuan (US$32 million) in
revenue.
However, Chinese directors were forced to recoup the huge
investments in commercial films by resorting to period costume,
martial arts epics, which were favored by foreign audiences. The
only theme to attract foreigners had become the favorite topic of
Chinese directors, he said, citing Zhang Yimou's Hero,
Cheng Kaige's The Promise and Feng Xiaogang's The
Banquet, all martial arts films with simple plots.
Commercial films helped the Chinese box office break free from
10 years in the doldrums. Before 2003, home-made movie box office
takings sat on a constant one billion yuan (US$128 million). In
2004, Chinese films pulled in 1.5 billion yuan (US$192 million),
rising to two billion yuan (US$256 million) in 2005 with 1.6
billion yuan (US$205 million) coming from overseas.
This year, with eight Chinese films boasting budgets exceeding
100 million yuan (US$12.8 million), takings are expected to hit a
record 2.6 billion yuan (US$333 million).
The movie market needed both blockbusters and low-cost films as
medium or low-cost productions were the cinema mainstays, said Geng
Xilin, assistant general manager of China Film Group Corporation,
adding medium and low-cost films took 70 percent of the US box
office.
"The market will be more prosperous when viewers have more
choice," said Geng.
(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2006)
