Toronto International Film Festival: Chinese movies

"Reports on 12 new Chinese films
By Shelly Kraicer

One looks to comprehensive film festivals, such as the Toronto International
Film Festival (TIFF), for an overview of contemporary cinema that offers
both breadth and depth. TIFF¹s expansiveness, for example, allows one to
make some judgments about the relative place of particular kinds of film in
the world right now. I would like to try something of the sort with Mainland
Chinese cinema in the context of TIFF, in particular how several new films
might be situated in the world-cinematic scene.

Although Jia Zhangke seems in the process of retooling his cinema to head in
new directions (though his public reaction, uncomfortably aligned with the
Chinese government¹s, to the Melbourne Film Festival Affair gives one
pause), Jia-ist cinema, through its profound effect on most younger
independent Chinese directors, seems lately more restrictive than liberating
in its influence. Film language in ³mainstream² indie Chinese films (both
docs and features) seems to have temporarily congealed into something like
formulaic liturgies: fetishization of the long take, the distant camera, the
objective tone, the unedited minutiae of daily life.

At the same time, commercial Chinese film has adopted its own pathologies,
giving us a series of big budget bloated historical epics cautiously tucked
away, far from the sensitivities of the Film Bureau, into genres that are
safely protected from any possible overt contemporary relevance. Several of
these latter works found their way into TIFF, which has frequently, in the
past ten years, extended a generous welcome to foreign fare that might
attract the attentions of North American distribution. Since sword-wielding
costumed Chinese actors sold in the past (thanks, Crouching Tiger Hidden
Dragon and your progeny), they have gained a marketable sheen that TIFF is
one of the key agents in promoting."

Read the rest of this report at dGenerate Films:

http://dgeneratefilms.com/chinese-cinema-events/finding-ways-to-fit-mainland
-chinese-films-at-toronto-and-vancouver/