The growing power of China’s cinema industry was on show at Asia’s top film festival last week, but some film-makers worry that a thirst for blockbusters is hurting quality and creativity.
“It’s a big population and a big market and a lot of opportunity to increase that market,” independent Chinese film-maker Wang Xiaoshuai said on the sidelines of the 16th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF).
“The problem is that people are doing the one type of film – the big budget, commercial type of film – and there is not much left for the rest of us.”
China had a major presence at the festival with 14 films in the main programme, studios strongly represented at the concurrent Asian Film Market and Chinese directors and acting talent out in force.
China’s box office receipts grew by 64 per cent in 2010, to touch on $1.5 billion. This year, official figures showed ticket sales from June to August alone at $640 million, a year-on-year rise of 77 per cent.
With China adding about 1,400 cinema screens this year and estimates that the total will more than double to 13,000 within four years, it is little wonder that the international film community is looking to the east with envy.
But director Peter Chan – at BIFF with his blockbuster Wu Xia, along with its stars Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei – includes one caveat to all those impressive figures.
Chan said while there seem to be more successful lower budget films being made in China, there were still far more blockbusters – and they were the productions taking up all the screens.
“If there are 10 screens, eight will be blockbusters so it doesn’t mean if you get more screens you get more choices,” said Chan.
He said the diversity of film was suffering, with people going to the cinema to watch “really big movies” while watching smaller productions at home, making it difficult to get lower budget films made.
Chan was among the first film-makers to recognise the trend for Chinese blockbusters, taking to Beijing talents he had honed in Hong Kong through films such as Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996) and during a stint in Hollywood, where he made The Love Letter (1999).
Since then, Chan has been responsible for a string of hits including one of China’s biggest box office and critical successes of recent times in The Warlords (2007).
Iranian director Morteza Farshbaf’s Mourning was handed one of two $30,000 prizes given in the New Currents award at the 16th Busan International Film Festival, which closed last Friday.
The Busan festival’s other main prize – the $30,000 Flash Forward prize for young non-Asian filmmakers – was taken by Italian director Guido Lombardi who presented the gritty drama La Bas – A Criminal Education.