MCLC: how Touch of Sin was eliminated from the Oscars

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: how Touch of Sin was eliminated from the Oscars
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Source: Asia Society blog:
http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/how-china-made-sure-thered-be-no-touch-sin
-oscars

How China Made Sure There'd Be No 'Touch of Sin' at the Oscars
By Jonathan Landreth

On January 3, the film critics of The New York Times published their Oscar
nominations wish list. Many of their wishes came true and on Sunday night
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will broadcast its annual
celebration of Hollywood and bestow golden statuettes on the handful of
films its members voted the best made in 2013.

Missing from the party will be one film that two of the three leading
Times critics claimed was deserving not only of a nomination for Best
Picture but also was so good that its Chinese maker should get a shot at
winning the Best Director award.

The film, A Touch of Sin, is a portrait of despair and violence ripped
from newspaper headlines in modern China so close to home that censors
there never cleared it for domestic distribution. Times critic Manohla
Dargis called its director, Jia Zhangke, “one of the fewfilmmakers of any
nationality who weighs the impact of social and political shifts on
people—in every shot.” Colleague A.O. Scott also tipped Jia for Best
Director and A Touch of Sin for Best Film. Dargis went further, suggesting
nominations for Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Jiang Wu) and Best
Supporting Actress (Zhao Tao). (You can watch Jia's September 2013
appearance at Asia Society in New York here
<http://asiasociety.org/new-york/filmmaker-jia-zhangke-confronts-everyday-v
iolence-touch-sin>.)

Jia’s writing did win the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film
Festival in May. In September, A Touch of Sin premiered
<http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2013/films/a-touch-of-sin> in the U.S. at the
New York Film Festival and then distributor Kino Lorber tried out a
limited release in big city America. But the film’s arresting and
beautifully shot four-part story, was, for the most part, more than most
U.S. audiences went in for, no surprise
<https://www.chinafile.com/can-chinas-leading-indie-film-director-cross-ove
r-america> given that the typical American moviegoer just doesn’t do
subtitles. Before long, Jia and Zhao were back in China, their brave work
relegated to illegal bittorrent sites, pirated DVDs and museum
retrospectives.

Film producers who have watched the rapid growth of Hollywood’s interest
in China’s film industry (mostly for its ready cash and its hungry,
growing moviegoing public) are not surprised by Jia’s absence from the
Oscars. It takes considerable money and marketing muscle to sculpt a
contender in the eyes of the Academy members who nominate and then vote on
the Oscar winners, says Janet Yang, who, in 1986, was on the first
Hollywood studio delegation to China
<http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2012/04/18/the-american-dream-alive-and-well-in
-china/> after the Cultural Revolution.

“How often has a foreign-language film ever been nominated for Best
Picture?” Yang asks, answering her own question. “Almost never.”

British director Danny Boyle’s sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire won Best
Picture in 2008 (and seven other Oscars), but only a small part of the
film was in Hindi and Marathi. If a subtitled film ever was to have a true
shot at a major-category Oscar it would be as a nominee for Best Foreign
Language Film. Those films that stand a chance in that category are
selected from a pool of official national submissions — films that have
enjoyed lasting theatrical release in their home countries and the full
support of their domestic industry leaders.

A Touch of Sin has thus far been denied an official release permit in
China despite Jia and the Shanghai Film Studio behind him having worked
closely with official censors from the get-go. If history is any guide,
the denial is tantamount to a ban. Without a release in China, A Touch of
Sin could not be submitted even for the Best Foreign Language Film prize.
By censoring Chinese films to uphold the ruling Communist party's view of
an appropriate cinematic portrayal of China, film authorities limit the
country's chances of winning an Oscar.

This year, China’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film
category was populist director Feng Xiaogang’s famine epic Back to 1942
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/movies/back-to-1942-by-chinese-director-
feng-xiaogang.html?_r=0Back%20to%201942>, and it failed to get nominated
by members of the Academy. Following are all the Chinese-language films
nominated Best Foreign Language Film over the years, including the one
Oscar winner, notably not from China:

1990 — Ju Dou, by mainland directors Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang
1991 — Raise the Red Lantern, by mainland director Zhang's Hong Kong
submission
1993 — Farewell My Concubine, mainland director Chen Kaige's Hong Kong
submission
1993 — The Wedding Banquet, American director Ang Lee's Taiwan submission
1994 — Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Lee, again for Taiwan
2000 — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Lee's winner for Taiwan
2002 — Hero, by mainland director Zhang

With so few officially-approved films to choose from and submit for
nomination it stands to reason that even fewer filmmakers from China have
ever won any Oscar, let alone an Oscar in a major category. In fact, only
one Chinese national ever has. Composer Tan Dun, from Changsha, Hunan, in
central China, won the Oscar for Best Original Score for his music in
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the 2000 Best Foreign Language film by
Taiwan-born American director Ang Lee. By comparison, 15 films from Japan
have been nominated and four have won the top honor awarded by the
Academy, since 1947, for films with a predominantly non-English dialogue.

This year, there are two Oscar nominations for Greater China, both for
Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster — one for for Best
Cinematography, by Philippe Le Sourd, and the other for Best Costume
Design, by William Chang Suk Ping.