Volume 2, Issue 1

One of the particular characteristics of Chinese films is that they are based on the unique sources of Chinese cultural thought. This article examines the main spiritual ideas of traditional Chinese culture through the lens of the three relationships between heaven and man, humans and other humans, and man and himself. It explores how Chinese films made in different cultural contexts and historical backgrounds have expressed the spirit of Chinese culture through both inheritance and transformation. We approach this issue by focusing on expressions of the traditional concepts of “the unity of man and heaven,” “vigor and promise,” “balanced harmony and the golden mean,” and “the unity of body and mind.”

Similar to “ Kongqi ” (air) theory, “ Tonghua ” (assimilation) theory describes the holistic thought and aesthetic spirit of Chinese films. From “ Zihua ” (self-enlightenment), “ Huaren ” (enlightening people), to “ Tonghua ” (assimilation), “ Tonghua ” theory describes an approach to film thinking that transcends the barriers of race and class as well as the binary opposition of evolution and degeneration and enters the free realm of film thought and aesthetic representation through the subject’s introspection and persuasion in body and mind as well as the communication and interaction between on-screen and off-screen. Based on both creative practice and theoretical criticism, “ Tonghua ” theory concerns all aspects between human and universe, human and nature, human and human, and the whole process from film production to consumption. Through the operational mechanism of mutual attraction, induction, and connection, an atmosphere of enlightenment and harmony is achieved through the unity of nature and human beings, providing endless vitality and empathic resonance in Chinese films.

Chinese cinema made remarkable achievements in the early twentieth century from which the basic esthetic characteristics of Chinese film were as formed. It is impossible to accurately cover the artistic practice of Chinese film, because Chinese filmmaking is based on “meaning” ( yiyi) , that is, the ideological content to be expressed in the film. In the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese film esthetics engaged a complex array of ideas: the traditional Chinese pragmatic view of art; the continuity of American narrative cinema; the Soviet principle of opposition and conflict; as well as the poetics of classical Chinese esthetics. Among these orientations, the pragmatic view of art emerged as the core of Chinese film esthetics, determining not only film content but film form.

Film narratology focuses on narrative time and narrative viewpoints. In films about revolutionary history produced in China’s “Seventeen-year Period” (1949–1966), narrative time chiefly involved choice of time, sequencing, and time spans (deformation of time). The creators basically followed the temporal order, so those films seem neat and standardized, giving prominence to the key plots and components. The narrative viewpoint of the day was chiefly omniscient, or a combination of the limited and omniscient viewpoints. The creators chose to let the narrator hide behind the text, so as to strengthen the “visual illusion” and promote the plot development through the plot itself. This narrative technique was decided by the ideology of the times and its aesthetic orientation.

In the 1990s, China’s northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform engineered by Deng Xiaoping as part of the “Reform and Opening-up Policy,” which resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some 30 million blue-collar workers being laid off. 20 years after the reform, China’s northeast, once among the most urbanized regions in the country, has effectively become China’s “Rust Belt.” This article examines the cinematic representations of China’s Rust Belt, specifically in China’s northeast, arguing that cinema plays a crucial role in both capturing and interrogating the emergence of new urban spaces and urban subjects amidst the spatial and ideological reorientations of the reform era. It also investigates the ways in which cinematic representations, through a shifting “system of symbols,” mediate the contradictions in the production of urban spaces, cultural norms, and social identities.

This study sheds new light on Feng Xiaogang, one of China’s most successful film directors, through an investigation of how Personal Tailor (2013) engages with the guiding rhetoric and ideals underpinning the “Chinese Dream”. The authors demonstrate how the hybrid political–commercial–artistic critique of the Chinese Dream in Personal Tailor offers poignant commentary on China’s quest for national rejuvenation during a period when China continues to struggle with increasing social and economic inequalities. By foregrounding these complex tensions between political and economic rationalism, and their intersections with an imagined nostalgia as a key story-telling trope, this study shows how Feng and Personal Tailor are expanding the boundaries of contemporary Chinese cinema in a new era of globalized commercial culture.

Since the 21st century, great changes have taken place in film co-productions between Hong Kong and the mainland and local films in Hong Kong. Since the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003 between the two regions, co-production between Hong Kong and the mainland moved from a state of maladjustment to mutual exchange and integration. However, a crisis of narrative homogenization arose around 2010, but this situation was remedied by anti-homogenization efforts through adding films of suspense genre. Around 2015, a “new mainstream blockbuster” connecting the performance of mainland mainstream values and esthetics emerged in co-productions, successfully carrying out a mainland replacement of extant blockbusters that commonly featured Hong Kong-style humanistic values and esthetics. Hong Kong local films are also undergoing esthetic evolution in the context of the cultural conservation of Hong Kong people. First, a return can be witnessed to classic “Hong Kong’s flavor” films such as gangster and ghost films, inheriting and innovating the traditional “Hong Kong’s flavor” esthetic. Secondly, we can observe Hong Kong society and its changing history from a cultural perspective through a consideration of the changing film esthetic. After many changes, Hong Kong films have entered a new esthetic form.

Chinese animation has always emphasized practice over theory. Due to its lack of a corresponding theoretical system, Chinese animation’s creative and industrial practices have suffered great setbacks. The once famous “School of Chinese Animation” unexpectedly declined with the rise of the wider animation industry. At the same time, the emerging animation industry is now facing similar problems. Therefore, it is imperative to construct a theoretical system for the “Chinese School of New Animation”. To achieve this goal, the school should be studied from the perspective of social context, realistic demands, historical experience, and its main content. Its theoretical construction should emphasize three primary aspects: artistic ontology, industrial mechanisms, and cultural diffusion.

Digital technology has ushered in the era of immersive movies. These developments have generated new requirements in performance esthetics that are detailed below. For one example, there are new demands for certain types of exaggeration and embellishment as well as more romance and pretense in documentary-style performances. There is also demand for more stylized and cartoonish performance formats. These performances have to be accurate, adequate, and to the point. Emotions should be expressed layer by layer, unrolling smoothly and delicately throughout the performance. Training in non-physical performances should be added to green- and blue-screen performance training. In solo performances without partners, actors and actresses should dramatically characterize their roles and consciousness when acting in the “void” of the studio. The digital era has strengthened attention, comprehension, emotions, etc. as performance attributes. The interaction between film performances and digital technology has contributed to the integration of Chinese performance discourse with the international discourse. Together, these factors have constructed a new type of performance esthetics in Chinese films.

In 2020, new domestic mainstream films continued to challenge audience expectations and achieve breakthroughs. These films not only are characterized by representations that are universally appealing to contemporary tastes, but also integrate the desires and interests of the public. They have become mainstream films because they are full of realistic content and true sentiments. Regarding the narrative esthetics and ideological strategies of these films, the three new “core actions” make the powerful trend of “uniquely colorful lyricism” appear brilliantly on the screen. These core actions are: (1) revealing the true nature of life and struggle by strengthening the sense of opposing forces; (2) emphasizing comedic elements to highlight low-level esthetic charms; and (3) creating open spaces and thematic implications through the use of different phases. Obviously, it has been the inevitable choice of new mainstream films to restore sincerity and truth of the screen, to sense the changes in people and society, and to interpret the new modern and contemporary histories in ways that originated from, but rise above, reality.

Hi, Mom (Nihao, Li Huanying 2021) is the first film directed by Jia Ling, a comedian. An autobiographical movie, it develops a mom–daughter-reuniting visional field in the mode of a time-travelling film. In fantasy scenes set in the 1980s, the film reshapes the “mother–daughter” emotional logic with that of “sisterhood”, using comic effects created by misplaced identities to reveal the tragic crux of the cruel reality of “forever losing maternal love”. “The art of analyzing emotions” is pursued through “interpreting visions”. The protagonist ultimately reconciles with reality not by controlling the vision rationally and subjectively, but by creating a deeper vision—a “true fairy tale”. This is for the purpose of retaining a scene of imagined realization of desire: bidding a fond farewell to mom in the vision, fulfilling a wish in the farewell and reconciling with reality and ego in the visional “mutual reconciliation”.

The significance of The Battle at Lake Changjin (Changjinhu, 2020) arguably lies in its shaping of a national aesthetic paradigm for Chinese blockbusters. This is mainly reflected in its creation of a panoramic film structure, constructing a solemn yet generous aesthetic style, forming the image of Chinese heroes, casting a consciousness between family and country, and rewriting historical justice through an aestheticized depiction. Behind the film’s latest success at the box office lies the enlightenment in Chinese blockbusters’ exploration of a national aesthetic paradigm: Chinese blockbusters need to firmly progress through this newly developed national-image aesthetic paradigm and continue exploring diverse aesthetic styles.

The uniqueness of One Second (Yimiaozhong, 2020) lies in its two-fold expression: it first tells the story of a father at an exceptional point in history who breaks out of jail to look for, then view a clip of his daughter. Second, through the form of cinema, it reflects on the relationship between the movie and audience, exploring the particularities of film to convey the auteur’s sentimentality for the medium. This is a simple but innovative film with rich connotations, diverse in its intentions.