MCLC: a search for Oscar contenders

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a search for Oscar contenders
Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (9/11/14): http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/in-china-a-search-for-oscar-contenders/
In China, a Search for Oscar Contenders
By EDWARD WONG
The question that hounds every major Chinese film director was asked of Jiang Wen at a news conference earlier this month in Beijing. Mr. Jiang and his business associates had organized the event to generate buzz over the upcoming “Gone with the Bullets,” a gangster film set in 1920s Shanghai that is a follow-up to “Let the Bullets Fly,” the top earner in the Chinese film industry four years ago.
The question, of course, had to do with a certain gold-plated statuette that gets handed out every year on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. A film from mainland China has yet to win one, and Chinese officials are eager for the cultural validation that an Oscar brings.
“As far as I know, for a film to compete for an Oscar, it needs the recommendation of the country’s film bureau,” Mr. Jiang said at the news conference on Sept. 1, according to Chinese news reports. “You can compete for an Oscar only with that recommendation. I can’t decide that. Or should I make the recommendation for them? I’m not sure whether they would mind that.”
Mr. Jiang then turned to officials from the national film bureau who were sitting in a front row.
“How about just sending us?” he said with some mirth. “Who else could represent China at the Oscars?
Zhang Yimou arriving for a screening of his film “The Flowers of War” in Beijing on Dec. 12, 2011. His new film, “Coming Home,” has been discussed as a possible Oscar contender.Credit Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Among observers of the Chinese film industry, two other films have been mentioned as possible contenders to be an official Oscar entrant from China this year or next: “Coming Home,” directed by Zhang Yimou, arguably the most famous Chinese director; and “Wolf Totem,” directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, a Frenchman. Each year, China’s sole entry for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film is selected by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, which regulates the Chinese film industry.
Critics of the Chinese film system say the selections are capricious and hobbled by censorship restrictions. Last year, the widely praised “A Touch of Sin,” directed by Jia Zhangke, was never allowed by the film bureau to be released in Chinese theaters, presumably because of its depictions of violence and economic disparities in contemporary China. That meant, of course, that China did not submit it as an Oscar entry, and a World War II drama, “Back to 1942,” directed by Feng Xiaogang, was chosen instead.
Last year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Oscars, said that to enter a movie in the category of Foreign Language Film for the 2014 award, a country had to make a submission by October 1, 2013. The film had to have been shown in the country of origin for seven consecutive days sometime between Oct. 1, 2012, and Sept. 30, 2013.
Of the three films mentioned recently as potential contenders, the only one that has been released so far is Mr. Zhang’s “Coming Home,” which had its worldwide premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last May and features Gong Li, Mr. Zhang’s longtime collaborator. Mr. Jiang’s film is expected to be formally released in China before the end of this year, and Mr. Annaud’s film probably will not be released until early 2015, though there is a chance it could be shown before the new year.
Mr. Zhang has long been a favorite filmmaker of the Communist Party and is known in China as much for directing the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as for his formidable cinematic oeuvre, which includes “Red Sorghum,” “Ju Dou,” “Raise the Red Lantern,” “To Live” and “Hero.” But the Oscar for Best Foreign Film has long eluded Mr. Zhang. His 2011 film, “The Flowers of War,” starring Christian Bale as a con man turned reluctant hero in wartime Shanghai, was an official Oscar entry from China, but it got little love from film critics in the United States. In the Oscar race, it did not even make the shortlist of nine films in the Best Foreign Language Film category, from which five nominees are selected.
At Cannes this year, a Chinese reporter asked Mr. Zhang about his “Oscar complex.”
“If you take a look at all my interviews in the last decade, you’ll see that what I have said on this has never changed,” he said, according to an article in Guangzhou Daily. “The right to recommend Oscar entries is not in my hand. You have a script and feel it could be a winner, but a year later when you’ve finished the shooting, how can you ensure that Sapprft will recommend you?”
“There is only one chance — that is you finish it well, then luck strikes and you are recommended,” he said. “Then luck strikes again, and five out of nine, you’re among the Oscar finalists. Then only when luck strikes again can you win. You need three lucky strikes in a row.”
“Coming Home” is a love story set in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, as a husband and wife try to rekindle their relationship after a long separation and the emotional trauma of one of modern China’s darkest periods, one that is often addressed only obliquely in historical material by the Chinese Communist Party.
In an email interview, Shelly Kraicer, a film critic and festival programmer who until recently lived in Beijing, said the view of history reflected in Mr. Zhang’s latest film conformed with official norms, and so the film could well get the Oscar nod from the film bureau.
“Given Zhang’s film’s obvious consonance with the CCP’s current line — history is something to be celebrated when it reflects on the glory of the party, but is something to be ignored and buried to the extent that it questions the CCP’s legitimacy — and also given Zhang’s (distressingly long-legged) continuing reputation in the West as one of China’s prime name-brand cultural exports, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if ‘Coming Home’ ends up being China’s official Oscar entry,” Mr. Kraicer said.
Another prestigious film whose producers are aiming to capture a wide international audience is “Wolf Totem,” based on a popular contemporary novel by Lü Jiamin, who writes under the name of Jiang Rong. The novel is a commentary on the settled nature of Chinese civilization and its weaknesses, in contrast to the robust culture of nomads roaming the vast Asian steppes. The protagonist is an ethnic Han intellectual who lives among Mongolian herders in the northern grasslands during the Cultural Revolution.
A main backer of the project is China Film Group, the largest state film production and distribution enterprise. The choice of Mr. Annaud as director was an interesting one, given that he had previously directed “Seven Years in Tibet,” which portrays the friendship between an Austrian climber, Heinrich Harrer, and the 14th Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 due to the Chinese occupation.
Mr. Annaud and other people involved in the film held a news conference in Beijing on Aug. 29. No date has been announced for the film’s release, though La Peikang, chairman of China Film Group, said at the news conference that it might not happen until early 2015, around the Lunar New Year. Depending on release dates, “Wolf Totem” could end up vying with “Gone with the Bullets” to be China’s Oscar entry next year.
“I think there is a big possibility that this film will bid for the Oscar next year,” Mr. La said, according to a report in Guangzhou Daily. “The rules state that each country can send only one film, and in China that final selection is made by the film bureau. Which film will it pick in the end? I don’t know, but I am hopeful about ‘Wolf Totem.’ And since ‘Wolf Totem’ is a joint production by China and France, it could represent not just China but also France in vying for the Oscar. That is to say, ‘Wolf Totem’ has two chances to go to the Oscars.”
The film has a built-in audience in China since the book has sold five million copies there, and perhaps double that if counting pirated copies. Total book sales outside of China are in the six figures.
“My own sense is that the film is likely to do very well in China, based on the popularity of the book,” said Jo Lusby, managing director of Penguin Books China, which has foreign rights to the novel. “For all concerned in the movie — the local film company, the publishers, the author — the main priority though was to make a movie that would cross over and become a mainstream success internationally.”
Despite the movie’s potential global appeal, Isabelle Glachant, a French producer who works in China, said she would be surprised if Chinese film officials selected “Wolf Totem” to be the official Oscar entry, since “many countries only propose films that have been directed by their national directors.”
“Knowing how China decides on their submission, somehow I doubt that they will ask a French director to represent China,” she said.
Weighing the chances of Mr. Zhang and Mr. Jiang, Ms. Glachant said she believed Mr. Zhang was a more probable choice, since Mr. Jiang’s “Let the Bullets Fly” was “a big political question mark for the authorities,” given the many ways in which viewers interpreted the film, an allegory set in pre-Communist China. She also pointed out that Mr. Jiang had been “banned from acting and directing at a point of his career,” referring to his fate after he presented his second feature film, “Devils on the Doorstep,” at Cannes in 2000 without official permission. The film, a farce about a Chinese village during the closing days of World War II, won the Grand Jury Prize there.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on September 11, 2014
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