MCLC: Film Directors' Guild (non) Awards

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Film Directors' Guild (non) Awards
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (4/10/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/seeking-more-from-chinese-fi
lms/

Seeking More From Chinese Films
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

There was a sting to the China Film Directors’ Guild awards in Beijing
this week, when the director Feng Xiaogang, the head of the jury,
announced that the guild would not award the top prizes — film of the year
and director of the year. The reason? No film in contention was good
enough: Chinese films need to meet “a higher standard,” Mr. Feng said
<http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2014-04/10/content_505036.htm?div=0%22>.

Chinese films are surging in terms of domestic box office revenue and
collaborations with Hollywood. But the criticism of their quality was
harsh at the award ceremony, which the guild’s chairwoman, the director Li
Shaohong, said by telephone was an industry event independent of the
government and did not receive state financing.

In the few years following the development of the Chinese film industry,
the take at the box office has grown exponentially, Mr. Feng said at the
ceremony on Wednesday evening. “The ‘Hollywood wolf’ came and didn’t eat
us us up,” he added, referring to fears of government officials and
directors alike that Hollywood might overwhelm China’s film market.

“In fact, by dancing with the wolf, the Chinese film market flourished,”
he continued. “On the other hand, the overall artistic quality of Chinese
films tended downward. At this moment, we should revive our ideals,
rebuild our spirit and return to the artistic meaning of film. That’s a
pursuit in which Chinese directors must not fall short.”

All nine jury members agreed that the guild awards were not just about
“pleasing ourselves and having fun,” said Mr. Feng, who won the as
director of the year last year for “Back to 1942.”

“What Chinese films need at this moment isn’t comfort, but to build a
higher standard,” he said.

Zhang Yibai, a director and member of the jury, said by telephone, “We
want films to be better. We have struggled hard all these years. And the
box office has been really good recently. But that doesn’t really
represent the level we should be at, artistically.”

“Now we want to do films that express our artistic ideals,” he said.

The decision to withhold the awards came as the Chinese box office
revenues grew 
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2014-01/02/c_118805374.htm> by 26
percent last year compared with 2012, to about 21.6 billion renminbi, or
nearly $3.5 billion, and Hollywood stars flocked to events such as the
announcement of a multibillion dollar studio complex, the Qingdao Oriental
Movie Metropolis.

Yet censorship still hobbles the industry, leaving it struggling to
describe Chinese society today amid the dizzying upheavals of a fourth
decade of high-speed economic growth. One film that did so, looking
unflinchingly at a darker side, unlike recent and popular romantic
comedies, was Jia Zhangke’s “A Touch of Sin,” which has not been permitted
to be released in China.

The Times’ critic Manohla Dargis described the film as “A story of lives
rocked by violence” that was “inscribed with visual lyricism, emotional
weight and a belief in individual rights” and “a stage on which men and
women struggle to fulfill basic moral obligations, including recognizing
one another’s humanity.”

The fact that Mr. Jia’s film was not cleared by the government for release
in theaters or in DVD form in China in 2013 disqualified it from
consideration for an award. But several directors contacted about the film
said the decision not to award the two main prizes was not a protest
against its nonrelease.

“We didn’t consider that,” said the director Wang Xiaoshuai, a jury member.

“This year’s selection wasn’t aimed at censorship, just at the Chinese
film environment,” Mr. Wang said. “We were just purely talking about
films, about returning to origins, everything else was thrown out.”

Ms. Li, the guild chairwoman, also said there was no connection between
the decision and the fact that Mr. Jia’s film has not been allowed to be
shown in China. But, she said by telephone, “It is a great pity that the
film could not get permission to be shown. If a film doesn’t get approval,
if it didn’t show in 2013, then there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Mr. Feng has spoken out often about censorship in the past, notably on the
fringes of the National People’s Congress meeting this year in Beijing,
when he said the need to satisfy the censors and other pressures was
leaving directors “exhausted.”

Kun Kun contributed research.