Chinese cinema

China flexed its muscle as the world’s largest film market during the recent five-day May Day and Labor Day weekend. The box office total of the top three movies alone reached more than $124 million.

China, greeting 2021 as the world’s number one film market, ushered in the New Year with even more impressive numbers to bolster that reputation on the first day of 2021. Chinese box office figures for January 1 stood at $92 million, a record haul for that holiday date.

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.