Content area
Full Text
Zhang Yimou’s tenth film as a director won the Grand Prix/Silver Bear at the Berlin Film International Film Festival in March 2000. Winning prizes at the top European Film Festivals was nothing new for the director, who pioneered the trend for Chinese film directors being awarded major prizes with his very first directorial effort, Red Sorghum (1987). It won the first prize, Golden Bear at the 1988 Berlin festival. This film became extremely popular with Chinese university students leading to the tragic uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989. One wonders how this situation may have affected the relationship between Zhang and the film bureaucrats of the People’s republic of China, especially because Ju Dou (1989), his third feature, was banned in China for its “sexual content,” whereas it was accepted into competition at the Cannes International Film Festival in the Spring of 1990 (whereupon it won the Luis Buñuel award). In this film we can also note the use of allegory, which had become a staple of films directed by “5th Generation” graduates of the Beijing Film Academy. And thus, we find a pattern of these films being championed by foreign film festivals and acclaimed by foreign film critics, but vilified by the Chinese authorities. Often, these works were somewhat protected in being co-produced by companies based in other countries. Such was the case for Ju Dou, a Japanese co-production and Zhang’s next film, Raise the Red Lantern (1991), where (taboo) Taiwanese production funds were channelled through Hong Kong. This film came under even stronger state criticism while winning the Silver Lion (second prize) at the Venice International Film Festival, various critics awards in the USA and Europe, and, perhaps most gallingly of all, being nominated for a Foreign Language Film Oscar, as the Hong Kong entry, in 1992. Cleverly, though, Zhang answered his domestic critics by turning away from historical/allegorical subjects to make a contemporary, realist drama about a feisty young peasant woman standing up for her rights, The Story of Qiu Ju (1992). From here, although his career continued to be spotted with confrontations, he gradually improved relations with the Chinese authorities to the extent that by the time of his ninth feature, Not One Less (1999), he had almost become...