By Amy Qin and Chang Chen
By most measures, the explosion of the film market in China over the past two decades has been a positive development.
The number of cinema screens has multiplied almost sevenfold since 2007, and watching films from home through streaming services like Youku and Sohu has never been easier. The influx of money into the Chinese market — now the world’s second largest by box-office revenues — has made finding financing for films easier,some directors say. Hollywood, of course, is happy too. Following the recent success of “Furious 7” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” the top four highest-grossing films of all time in China are Tinseltown imports.
But a bigger pie has not translated into bigger slices for all. Many prominent independent cinema figures in China say they are getting squeezed out by the increasingly commercially driven market.
“This may be the best of times for commercial films, but it is also the worst of times for art house films,” wrote the director Wang Xiaoshuai in aletter to moviegoers that was posted on Sina Weibo on April 30 and re-posted more than 20,000 times, including by other prominent “Sixth Generation” directors, such as Jia Zhangke and Lou Ye.
In the letter, Mr. Wang, best known for his portrayals of urban life and social dislocation in films such as “Beijing Bicycle” (2001), implicitly called out cinema managers for their lack of support for his latest film, “Red Amnesia.” Part mystery, part observational drama, the film takes on the issue of selective memory of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in present-day China.
In an interview with the Chinese-language website of The New York Times, Mr. Wang said he believed many people wanted to see his film but were unable to because of the low number of screenings, often at inconvenient times.
“Logically speaking,” Mr. Wang said, “as people who have been accustomed to one flavor for a long time enter into a more prosperous era, they should have the choice of many different flavors.” Citing “Red Amnesia” as an example, he characterized the general environment for less commercially minded films as “cruel.”
“The bigger the market gets,” he added, “the more money is made and the greedier people become.”
“Red Amnesia” has received largely favorable reviews from critics and moviegoers in China and at the 2014 Venice Film Festival, where it was shown in the main competition. But it has secured less than 2 percent of the country’s total movie screenings on its opening day, earning about $130,000 at the box office, according to the film data site 58921.com. On its peak day, May 7, the film had 4,045 screenings, or about 3.25 percent of the national total. By contrast, “Avengers: Age of Ultron” had 77,498, or 66 percent of total screenings, at its peak, on May 14.
Since its premiere on April 30, “Red Amnesia” has pulled in just over $1.4 million at the box office, according to the movie website Mtime.com. Last weekend, “Avengers: Age of Ultron” passed the $200 million mark in China.
Mr. Wang pointed out the impact of Hollywood’s overwhelming dominance in the domestic market. “Every month you have American films coming in and occupying most of the space, so how are Chinese films supposed to compete?” he said. “It’s not even about competing. It’s about having the space to survive.”
Mr. Wang’s frustrations were echoed by the makers of another film that was released this month. At an early screening of “Mr. Deng Goes to Washington,” a small-scale political documentary, its executive producer, Lu Muzi, delivered a small tirade directed at the film distributors and marketers in the audience.
“Some cinema managers have said our film is not a main dish for the market,” Ms. Lu said. “But I think our value lies in being a side dish that the whole country loves.”
After the screening, Ms. Lu, 46, said she felt that the interests of her generation have been overlooked by the film industry. “They only show films for the younger demographic, like romantic films or action films,” she said. “Why don’t they show films that my generation wants to watch as well?”
Other art house film directors point to a problem further upstream of distributors, cinema managers and marketers: the Chinese government. Despite a major cultural drive to project China’s soft power abroad, the Chinese government has imposed increasing constraints on filmmakers and film-related events operating outside state-sanctioned channels.
Last year, the authorities shut down the Beijing Independent Film Festival, confiscating documents, computers and films. Although screenings of nonmainstream films still take place, they are held on a smaller scale, often in private homes or cafes, making it far more difficult to reach new audiences.
Government censorship is a constant issue. Despite the rapid growth of the film industry, independent filmmakers say it is still difficult to find funding for projects, especially those that might touch on topics deemed sensitive by the government.
For example, Mr. Jia’s “A Touch of Sin,” a critically acclaimed compilation of four vignettes portraying modern social woes in China, never made it onto domestic screens even after undergoing several rounds of edits with state censors. This was because the government feared the film would inspire viewers to engage in antisocial behavior, Mr. Jia told The Hollywood Reporter this month.
“The hardest thing is deducing where the line is,” said Vivian Qu, the producer of the 2014 independent film “Black Coal, Thin Ice,” which won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival last year.
“Over the years, as the Chinese film market grew bigger and bigger, the words ‘art house’ and ‘independent’ and ‘underground’ seem to have become much more sensitive than before,” said Ms. Qu, speaking at a roundtable discussion this month on independent films in China.
But Mr. Wang, who like most prominent independent filmmakers in China, has made films with official permission (including “Red Amnesia”), said in the interview that the increasing demand for commercially successful blockbusters had created a form of market-driven self-censorship that had rendered political censorship irrelevant.
“Everyone is becoming more commercially oriented and making money is a lot easier, so no one really wants to touch sensitive topics anymore,” Mr. Wang said. “The film bureau doesn’t even have to censor the film afterwards, because there’s nothing left to censor.”
Independent filmmakers have called on the government to adopt policies to support independent cinema in China, particularly as the Chinese film authorities are expected to raise the annual quota on imported foreign films in 2017 or 2018. The quota, currently at 34 titles a year, has helped shield the revenue of domestic films.
The government has exhibited mixed feelings on the issue of independent filmmaking. On one hand, independent films bring prestige at international film festivals and can help the domestic film industry compete against foreign imports. On the other, the government has remained wary of films that are too “artistic” and are outside the mainstream — as well as possibly subversive.
Mr. Wang said these concerns were overdrawn. “Don’t be scared of art house films,” he said. “Most creators are really more interested in talking about our feelings, our lives, our families.”
“Give the creators back the ability to create,” he added.
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