Scrutiny of these movies financing in fact reveals that apart from Devils, all are international co-productions. The People s Republic to this day keeps a tight rein over filmmaking and parrots the dogma cinema must serve the people. But this constraint has been perversely undermined by modern China s obsession with its historical destiny. Fifth Generation filmmakers such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou portray China s past, and are faithful to the dictums of 1930s progressive Chinese cinema in using history to dissect the failings of the present. But Sixth Generation filmmakers, who arrived on the scene in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, trumpet a very different sense of aesthetics.
Allegories based on madness, dysfunctional families and above all alienation are major themes.
For these independents, the biggest headache is seeing their films scoop up awards on the festival circuit while remaining largely unseen in China itself. The two currents historical and contemporary look set to join in Jia Zhangke s new film Platform. A richly layered work, it observes the lives of young people in a provincial music troupe as they fall in love and are hurtled into the vast unknown of China s modernization. Over three hours long but with less than a hundred shots, the film is unprecedented in mainland Chinese cinema. Taiwanese films, meanwhile, have won international recognition even though the island s film industry has been in decline, with annual output dwindling to 20 films and funding coming from the government or abroad.