https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5269-2251
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Abstract
Intersecting Chinese cinema studies and film festival studies, this article inquiries into the (re)invention and growing significance of qingnian dianying (‘youth cinema’) on the Chinese film festival scene since the mid-2010s—a period we approach as the ‘post-independent’—through a close examination of the FIRST International Film Festival. The article first uses the idea of ‘post-independent Chinese cinema’ to re-examine the contemporary cinematic field, wherein an understanding regarding the in-betweenness of Chinese independent cinema (duli dianying) and art cinema (yishu dianying) helps to contextualize our study of FIRST. Qingnian dianying is approached as a set of discourses and practices centring around the ‘networked auteurism’, which underscores the institutional configurations of the film festival network and the logic of project that the emerging film auteur correlates with and works through. In our case study of FIRST, we turn to the performativity of qingnian dianying to examine a series of festival activities wherein auteurism is articulated and realized via working through a cycle of film projects. Overall, this research foregrounds qingnian dianying as a symptom as well as a mechanism to understand contemporary Chinese cinema in transition in relation to the domestic film industry, cultural policies and the global film festival network.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank DUAN Lian, SHAN Zuolong, WANG Tong, WANG Yishu for accepting our interview and sharing their knowledge and experiences. We gratefully acknowledge Prof. Seio NAKAJIMA, the General Editors, and the reviewer for their constructive comments to improve our manuscript. A previous version of this paper was presented at the international conference Reassessing Chinese Independent Cinema: Past, Present…and Future? organized by Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA) and Newcastle University in January 2021, and we are thankful for the feedback from other colleagues during the discussion session.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 According to the Film Industry Promotion Law, almost all PRC film festivals/exhibitions are supervised by the national-, the provincial-, the municipal- and the communal-level official authorities. Film festivals (dianying-jie) should also be differentiated from various film exhibitions (dianying-zhan/-zhou/-ji), as the former—such as the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) and the Hainan Island International Film Festival (HIIFF)–are sanctioned and directly guided by China Film Administration while the latter category may range from provincially-sanctioned events—such as the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival (PYIFF)—to relatively independent-run activities, such as Inner Mongolia Film Week.
2 The ‘New Talent Project’ was set up by the SIFF Project in 2014 to support young directors’ first and second feature films. Other similar initiatives include those installed at the Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF, Project Pitches, est. 2015), Pingyao Project Promotion (est. 2019) at the PYIFF, H!Action Project Market (est. 2019) at the HIIFF, and financing forums at the Zhejiang International Youth Film Festival (est. 2016), Chongqing Youth Film Festival (est. 2015), the Chinese Youth Film Week (est. 2016), the One International Women’s Film Festival (est. 2017), the HiShorts! Xiamen Short Film Week (est. 2019), etc.; see Liu and Zang (Citation2021). Funding schemes and talent initiatives launched by film institutions and enterprises include Wu Tianming Youth Film Fund for Young Talents, CFDG Young Director Support Program (organized by the China Filmmaker Association), the Young Filmmaker Development Program, Dirty Monkey 72 Transformations Film Project, the Wanda Elite Plan, and so forth; see Liu (Citation2021).
3 In the Promotion Law, the specific item related to film festivals and public film screenings read, ‘Article 35 of the law makes the organization of any type of film festival or film ‘exhibit’ dependent on approval from the Film Bureau or its local administration. Article 49 bans public screening or festival screening of any films that have not obtained an official permit’ (Veg Citation2019, 141).
4 PRC’s film industry, which was formerly under the control of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT, 2013-2018), was reassigned to be under the purview of the Central Propaganda/Publicity Department (zhongxuanbu) in 2018, supervised by the China Film Administration (guojia dianyingju).
5 For example, companies such as Heaven Pictures (tianhuahuatian, est. 2010), Blackfin Production (heiqi, est. 2013), Dangmai Film (dangmai yingye, est. 2016), Midnight Blur (wuyeshijiao) & Parallax Films (huanshi wenhua) (est. 2017), Factory Gate Film (Gongchang damen yingye, est. 2017), and Radiance (chijiao, est. 2017), just to name a few, have been eagerly connecting (young) film talent (domestic and overseas) and their projects with the variously-scaled arthouse markets via various film festivals and especially their pitch forums and project markets.
6 For a more detailed archival/industrial analysis of pitch forums at Chinese film festivals, refer to Liu and Zang (Citation2021).
7 Other film festivals in PRC that exhibited films without the screening permits (not necessarily uncensored) include PYIFF and the West Lake International Documentary Festival.
8 FIRST’s relocation to Xining can be regarded both as a forced move and the founders’ active choice. Despite its connection with universities in its early years in Beijing (2006-2010), FIRST remained a non-state sanctioned grassroots film festival before 2011. Its unofficial status and affinity with films with critical views resulted in its sporadic frictions with the authorities. Given the different levels of censorship, its move to Xining can be seen as FIRST’s strategy to escape Beijing’s strict censorship and cultural restrictions but simultaneously echoed with the Xining government’s ambition of city-making to boost the local creative industry and cultural tourism (Duan Citation2021). FIRST also values Xining’s tourist image (e.g. for young college students) as a way to appeal young filmgoers and consciously promotes the city image of ‘wildness’ aligned with its profile of ‘youth cinema’. After the implementation of the Promotion Law, the supervision body of FIRST has changed from the municipal level to the Publicity Department of Qinghai Province.
9 Both Hao Jie (known for The Love Song of Tiedan [Meijie], the ‘Best Narrative Film’ at the 2012 FIRST) and Ma Li (known for Born in Beijing [Jingsheng], the winner of ‘Grand Jury Prize’ of the same year) are well-acknowledged independent filmmakers. Besides Born in Beijing, the 2012 FIRST also shortlisted Qiu Jiongjiong’s Madame (Gunainai, 2010) and Xu Tong’s Shattered (Laotangtou, 2011), two independent documentary films.
10 FIRST is province-sanctioned and only eligible to exhibit foreign entries from a single country (danguobie); yet it did hold an international competition and exhibition before 2019, which changed after the implementation of the Promotion Law.
11 According to the submission conditions, there is a strong emphasis on ‘Chinese’ elements as the films must fulfil one of four conditions, ranging from the directors’ citizenship, film dialogue, shooting locations, and film crew. See the FIRST website.
12 The 2021 FIRST cancelled the screening of three documentary entries without release permits due to so-called ‘technical reasons’ (jishu yuanyin). The other two documentary titles without release permits were screened. There were rumours that the authorities also interfered in the granting of awards, which resulted in a vacancy in the ‘Best Documentary’ award in this edition. However, ‘Best Narrative Feature’ and ‘Best Director’ went to Zhang Zhongchen’s the White Cow (Zuihou de gaobie, 2021) – a film without the dragon seal.
13 Besides the requirements on the conditions of the director’s debut and China premiere, whether a particular film is selected into ‘Debut Spotlight’ also depends on its aesthetics and viability in the market: whether it is thought to be palatable enough to be spotlighted to such an extent to reach a larger scale of audience.
14 By the 2021 edition, the camp extended its recruitment from merely directors to cinematographers, producers, production designers and sound designers. These participants constitute several film crews centring around the film projects proposed by directors.
15 Whereas a majority of qingnian dianying projects at FIRST are relatively low-budget (usually no more than RMB 10 million) and arthouse-oriented, the financing forum has attracted more than one hundred film and media companies and institutes, including heavyweights such as Wanda Media, iQIYI, Alibaba Pictures, Momo Pictures as well as relatively small companies targeting at the arthouse market such as Midnight Blur and the Taiwan-based Flash Forward Entertainment (qianjing yule). The business scope of industry guests ranges from festival selection, investment, production, distribution, to promotion. See the 2020 FIRST Industry Brochure.
16 Successful cases in the FIRST financing forum itemized in the festival brochure include international festival laureates such as Wang Xuebo’s Knife in the Clear Water (Qingshuili de daozi, 2016), Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still (Daxiang xidierzuo, 2018), Huang Zi’s All about ING (Muling, yiming, weiming, later renamed Xiaowei, 2019), as well as relatively low-budget productions targeting the domestic market such as Hao Jie’s My Original Dream (Wo de qingchunqi, 2015), Dong Yue’s The Looming Storm (Baoxuejiangzhi, 2017), and Teng Congcong’s Sending Me to the Clouds (Song wo shang qingyun, 2019).
17 The two labs were designed and run differently. The documentary lab operates more like a funding scheme (with celebrities’ private donations), annually rewarding the ‘Best Documentary’ award-winners with a cash award of RMB 50 thousand and financing 1-3 projects in development (around RMB 100-150 thousand for each based on the annual donation received).
18 For instance, the Hangzhou Asian Film Festival (Hangzhou Yazhou Qingnian Yingzhan, 2009–2014) has in some ways prefigured festivals like FIRST, in its foregrounding a discourse of ‘youth’, ‘auteur’, as well as eagerly nurturing festival audiences via a diversified programming strategy that emphasizes the curatorial idea of ‘Asia’.
19 As outlined in the ‘14th Five Year Plan’ (2021-25) for the PRC’s film industry (November 2021), besides one of its objectives being to ‘develop a group of outstanding young film writers, directors and actors to form an important reserve of top talent for Chinese films’, several initiatives concern the ‘Projects to Cultivate Film Talents’ (dianying rencai peiyang gongcheng), such as the film mentorship system, the umbrella ‘new Chinese film power project’ (xinliliang jihua), film script workshop and so forth (‘“shisiwu” Zhongguo Dianying Fazhan Guihua’ 2021; Xu Citation2021; Davis Citation2021).
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Shan Tong
Shan Tong is a post-doctoral fellow at Communication University of China. She received her Ph.D. degree from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong in 2019. Her doctoral research studies transnational documentary making practices since the late 2000s in China. Her research articles have been published in international peer-reviewed academic journals including Studies in Documentary Films and Journal of Chinese Cinemas.
Ran Ma
Ran Ma is associate professor at the international program of “Japan-in-Asia” Cultural Studies and the program of Screen Studies, Nagoya University, Japan. Her research interests include East Asian independent cinemas and film festival studies, for which she has published several journal articles and book chapters, including the two recently co-edited special issues titled “In/visibility in post-war Okinawan images’ ‘ for the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema (2021). Ma is also the author of Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2019).