SHANGHAI, THE BECOMING
THING City's film industry looks for a
sequel By Ilan Carmel
SHANGHAI - Last month, in a smoky basement
bar at the heart of old colonial Shanghai - the legendary
Bund - an assortment of young amateur filmmakers
gathered for an improvised short-film competition.
The event organizer, Juan Vargas, had come to
Shanghai from Colombia on a writing mission and
turned to film production after realizing the
potential in the market.
"We are trying to
encourage people to make films," explained Vargas,
whose newly established production company, Mei
Wen Ti Productions, had just produced its first
feature film, 90 Days Visa, in Shanghai.
For Vargas and his small circle of associates, the
contest, which had been announced and hastily organized
only
10 days earlier, was an opportunity both to
contribute to and stimulate the emergence of an
independent film industry in Shanghai as well as a
way to recruit young promising talents.
These amateur filmmakers toiled day and
night for 10 days to produce 15 short films, each
several minutes in length, just so they could get
their foot in the door and mingle with the rising
small community of independent filmmakers in
China's eastern metropolis. One of these
entrepreneurs was Frenchman Severin Bonnichon,
who, like most of the contest participants, had
used equipment from home to shoot his debut pieces
in Shanghai. The short, slightly intoxicated
Bonnichon said he had made a few short films back
in France, but in Shanghai he was at a
disadvantage because he did not have access to
proper equipment or a professional film crew.
At present, there are two sides to the
film industry in Shanghai: the independent film
sector, which is barely in its infancy; and the
government-run Shanghai Film Studio, which has
been releasing mainly propaganda films that are
embarrassing even relative to typically
low-quality features produced by China's domestic
film industry.
"The problem with the
Shanghai Film Studio," said Adrian Cortez, who was
the cameraman for 90 Days Visa and one of
the co-founders of Mei Wen Ti Productions, "is
that the government keeps a tight lid on the
creativity of the commercial productions here."
Cortez spoke about generating an
environment of creativity among local and
international talents: "The main problem we are
facing is with [screenwriting] ... There are good
writers out there who are writing for
English-language magazines; we just need to
[improve] the [quality] level and also attract
good writers from overseas."
Cortez, who
graduated with a degree in film from Yale
University, is about to open his own media
consulting company, called Tangran, and is also
working on medical projects in North Korea, is one
of the financial motors behind the independent
film productions. He said independent films do not
mean non-commercial ones; there is plenty of
liquid cash in Shanghai looking for an investment
return.
Vargas, however, was the one who
raised the 3,000 euros (US$3,640) needed for the
production of their film. According to Cortez,
when independent films improve in quality, they
will be able to attract more investment from
wealthy, pragmatic Chinese businesspeople who are
seeking to develop profitable new industries. The
additional funds will then further improve the
quality of locally made films, in a kind of
virtuous circle.
"The key element here is
money," said Cortez, "so if these films can start
making money, the government will follow suit and
release some of the pressure."
The current
stagnancy of Shanghai's dream factory is ironic
given the city's role as the birthplace of Asian
cinema. In the first half of the 20th century,
Shanghai's film industry was second only to
Hollywood, and Old Shanghai films featuring such
stars as Ruan Lingyu, Hu Die, Zhao Dan and Zhou
Xuan remain popular classics. Shanghai also
provided the foundation for Hong Kong's thriving
cinema, as many of its leading actors, directors,
writers and cinematographers fled to the
then-British colony after 1949. Even after the
communist takeover, Shanghai Film Studio took a
leading role in the already declining domestic
film industry.
China's economic reforms of
the early 1980s saw a rapid drop in the quality
and the number of films produced in Shanghai,
while at the same time the relatively open studios
of Beijing and Xi'an prospered
and developed.
"Beijing also supports much
better universities and training institutes for
film production," said Liu Haibo, a lecturer in
film and media studies at the Film and TV
Institute of Shanghai University. "There is no
comparison between the quality of the training
centers of Beijing and the talent they attract
[and] what is available in Shanghai.
"Shanghai is open only in terms of its
economy, infrastructure and its position as a
financial center; in terms of arts and culture, it
is a very conservative society and environment,"
Liu said.
In the past few years, mainly
during the annual Shanghai International Film
Festival, a number of film entrepreneurs have
suggested attracting investments to create a
bigger film industry in the city, but little
action has materialized. One additional reason may
be a lack of financial incentives from the
government, mainly in the form of tax cuts for
investment in film projects. Liu believes the
local government has not bothered with tax
incentives because it has not perceived an
adequate return on investment in films. Local and
foreign investors have also been reluctant, at
least so far, to pour money into a virtually
non-existent industry, for the same basic reason.
So far at least, domestic and
international investors in the Chinese film
industry prefer to fund sure successes; this
usually means Beijing-based productions featuring
big-name directors, such as Chen Kaige, Zhang
Yimou and Feng Xiaogang, to name a few. These
leading mainland directors have also established
intimate relations with investors that are based
on mutual understanding. In these understandings,
China's leading filmmakers are continuously
hammering at familiar formulas that make for
domestic box-office hits, thereby fortifying their
own stance and popularity with moviegoers and
investors alike. Typical tried-and-true themes,
often seen in popular commercial mainstream
Chinese cinema, borrow from nostalgic images of
feudal China, or re-create and canonize
20th-century revolutionary and wartime heroic
glory.
Critics of China's commercial film
industry claim that a trend has developed in the
past few years in which China's leading directors
indulge in narcissistic ego-trips and public
relations campaigns after their initial
masterpieces are made. Be that as it may, no one
can argue with box-office success. In the past
decade, the mainland's film industry has released
more then 100 titles annually, and last year the
top 10 most profitable Chinese films yielded a
profit of 600 million yuan ($74.4 million).
As still another reason for the weak film
industry in Shanghai, Liu mentioned the state
policy of allowing only big investors to enter the
business, as well as artificially directing
investments to big studios in Beijing.
Furthermore, Shanghai has seen a high turnover in
its pool of film professionals and a brain drain
since the early 1990s, mostly to the benefit of
Beijing's studios and production companies.
Finally, the general commercially oriented
environment, especially in the past two decades,
has damaged Shanghai's standing as a creative-arts
center. The general recession in the national film
industry in the past few years has not improved
the prospects for a Shanghai-based film industry.
Figures from the city's own cinemas show the
severity of the problem: only 10% of films
screened last year were domestic productions,
while the rest were foreign or made in Hong Kong or Taiwan. By contrast, on a
national level, Chinese movies sell more tickets
than foreign movies do.
According to the
list of the 100 Best Chinese Films of the 20th
Century, published in the Chinese edition of Asia
Weekly, 17 were made in Shanghai between 1923 and
1949, while only nine were made in the city
between 1950 and 1997. Of the 114 films produced
in China last year, only 24 were made with the
participation of Shanghai film studios. And of the
top 10 box-office hits in 2004, only Wong
Kar-Wai's 2046 was produced by the Shanghai
Film Group, although the creative work was done by
the Hong Kong production team.
"The
political restrictions in Shanghai are much more
severe than in Beijing," said Liu. "Films that
focus on the negative aspects of modern urban life
might not be approved by the authorities." Even
with changes in the government's policy allowing
foreign investment in Shanghai film productions,
the underdevelopment of credit guarantees in China
would make it risky for foreign investors to
finance full-length feature films. As for local
investors, this industry is brand-new, while their
tendency will be to invest in familiar industries.
Foreign-produced independent films
targeted for export might just be the oxygen mask
needed to kick-start Shanghai's film industry once
again. The needed talent is already in the city,
the investment required is not very high, and
there appear to be a growing number of avid
believers as well as entrepreneurial forces to
make it happen. Vargas, for one, is convinced that
as with any other new industry, this one has the
potential for rapid growth given the proper vision
and financial boost. And he is backing his words
with actions: he's already planning the next
independent film contest, slated for next month.
Ilan Carmel is a Shanghai-based
freelance journalist, covering mainly art, culture
and social issues. He has a master's degree in
Asian studies from Monash University, specializing
in Chinese urban anthropology, and is working on
mapping tradition versus modernity in Shanghai
using both images and text. He can be reached at
ilan.carmel.sh@gmail.com.
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