China

The beginning of the 20th century marks a time in which China gave birth to her First Generation of filmmakers. Most of the first generation were cinematographers who adopted the film medium and recorded live performances like Peking operas.

The HFPA’s Ting Ting Xu examines Asian film trends through standout films and the authors behind them. In the history of Chinese cinema, there have been until lately only a few films about Tibet, including director Zhang Yang's pilgrimage movie Paths of the Soul, Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Horse Thief and a propaganda film Red River Valley.

The HFPA’s Ting Ting Xu examines Asian film trends through standout films and the authors behind them. Though it took Hong Kong director Derek Kwok Cheung Tsang and producer Peter Ho-Sun Chan almost a year to obtain a theatrical release permit from the mainland Chinese authorities, their film Better Days became an instant hit once it got released in October 2019.

For four months last year Fan Bingbing, the most famous actress in China, disappeared, alarming her fans and causing all kinds of conspiracy theories on social media. She reemerged from her (voluntary?) seclusion when she was charged with tax evasion for understating her earnings on at least four fake movie contracts, something that is apparently common practice in China.

One in an occasional series exploring the state of Hollywood films in global markets. When high hopes for the box office for Pacific Rim were dashed when it only made $102 million domestically with a production budget of $190, it was China to the rescue where the film earned an additional $112 million.

Set to be the largest US-China co-production ever, The Great Wall will open this Friday, February 17 in the US. Directed by the renowned Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou, the fantasy blockbuster is set against the breathtaking backdrop of China’s iconic landmark and follows two western explorers’ journey to the frontier of a heroic battle between Chinese warriors and ruthless yet intelligent creatures called Tao Tie.

Song of the Phoenix is the late Chinese filmmaker Wu Tianming's last directorial work. The film revolves around an elderly Suona performer who struggles to pass on the slowly dying musical art to a young apprentice in a modern and urbanized China.

I Am Not Madame Bovary, directed by critically acclaimed filmmaker Feng Xiaogang and starring Fan Bingbing, is a rare satire of China’s bureaucracy in the current landscape of Chinese cinema. The term “Madame Bovary” originates from a famous fictional character “Pan Jinlian” in the 17th-century Chinese novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei).

China, the world’s fastest growing film and TV market, will allow potentially hundreds of millions of its citizens to watch the Golden Globe awards show next month. The Golden Globes gala on January 11 will be streamed live for the first time on Hunan TV (湖南卫视) in addition to the telecast by network CCTV6 which will more than double the viewership compared to previous years.