Latest update April 1st, 2015 6:34 PM
State of Flux
China’s Sixth Generation of filmmakers became the toast of the festival circuit in the 1990s and enjoyed international art-house success in the early 2000s. However, as ongoing censorship issues restrict self-expression and critical attention shifts elsewhere, their recent fortunes have been decidedly mixed.
By John Berra
The term ‘Sixth Generation’ refers to the loose grouping of Chinese filmmakers who completed their university education in the late-1980s and released their debut features in the early-1990s. Jia Zhangke, Lou Ye, Wang Xiaoshuai, Zhang Yuan, Wang Quan’an, Ning Ying, Li Yu and Diao Yinan can be seen as the most prominent filmmakers of this group. Favoring documentary realism over the phantasmagoric landscapes of such Fifth Generation figureheads as Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige, they made waves on the festival circuit due to international interest in seeing candid images related to China’s ‘opening up’, which they initially captured by shooting on 16mm, then later on digital video. While each member of the Sixth Generation is a truly distinctive filmmaker, consideration as a group stems from such common factors as education, subject matter and the manner in which their works have been circulated, officially or otherwise.
Firstly, most of these directors are graduates of the prestigious Beijing Film Academy where they not only received technical training but also developed the networks that would enable them to shoot their early features with limited resources. Some of the Sixth Generation were classmates and shared living space in the confines of the school’s basic dormitory space. In the behind-the-scenes documentary on the US DVD of his film Summer Palace(2006), Lou recalls his education at the institute: “I slept on the lower deck and Wang Xiaoshuai took the upper deck. Room 515 in the Film school.” Secondly, these filmmakers evidenced an interest in the city, particularly Beijing, with their collective work constituting a record of the rapidly changing metropolis during the economic rush. It should be noted, however, that others have explored the rural terrain that is synonymous with the Fifth Generation, although they have done so within a more politicized sphere. Thirdly, the Sixth Generation is a beneficiary of festival economy: their works could not be exhibited at home due to censorship restrictions but found a receptive audience overseas through prestigious events such as Berlin, Cannes, London, Rotterdam, Toronto, and Venice, not to mention curated seasons at various arts institutes. Fourthly, the majority of Sixth Generation works from the early-1990s to the early-2000s were funded, at least in part, by European companies or arts funds which were keen to commission films that would show the hard reality behind China’s economic acceleration.
Controversy was part of the package from the outset, with the banning of such landmark titles as Beijing Bastards (1993), Frozen(1997), Suzhou River (2000) and Unknown Pleasures(2002) adding to their art-house allure. However, if the early-1990s to the mid-2000s represented an extended period of fruitful activity for the Sixth Generation, then recent years have been altogether quieter. This article will look at the state of the Sixth Generation in 2014 to consider its current standing on the world stage: certain members are still loyal to their rhetoric, while others have tested more commercial waters as censorship restrictions have been somewhat relaxed, and a few have sadly faded from public view.
Jia Zhangke
Although he is often referred to as the figurehead of the Sixth Generation, mainly due to his impressive run of honors at major festivals which includes the Golden Lion at Venice for Still Life(2006), Jia’s background has little in common with the other members. Although he attended the Beijing Film Academy, Jia was a theory major; his ‘hometown’ trilogy of Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures (2002) was set against the dusty backdrop of Shanxi province rather than the sprawling cityscape; and marginalization in Jia’s films is represented by migrant laborers rather than disaffected urbanites. The World(2004), which focused on the workers at leisure attraction Beijing World Park, was the first of Jia’s features to be approved for a mainland theatrical release. Some critics cynically identified the director as the poster boy for cooperation between the independent sector and the state, an impression that was reinforced when Jia was commissioned to shoot the Shanghai documentary I Wish I Knew(2010) to commemorate the city’s World Expo. Jia’s most recent work, the riveting multi-stranded crime expose A Touch of Sin (2013), has ruptured his mutually beneficial relationship with the state. At the time of writing, the circumstances surrounding the film’s indefinitely delayed release in its home territory are the subject of much speculation: the initially planned November 2013 release date came and went, followed by a leaked memo from the film bureau that discouraged all media outlets from conducting interviews with Jia, who remained uncharacteristically silent on the matter and withdrew from a number of festival appearances for ‘personal reasons’. The lack of official release in its home territory meant that A Touch of Sin could not be considered as a Best Foreign Film submission for the 2013 Academy Awards, but Jia’s stock on the festival circuit remains as high as ever due to collecting the Best Screenplay award at Cannes.
Lou Ye
Perhaps the most contentious figure of the Sixth Generation, the ever-provocative Lou has recently been steadily reestablishing a dialogue with Chinese cineastes. In 2006, he was slapped with a five-year ban due to his fearlessly confrontational coming-of-age drama Summer Palace, which detailed the heightened emotional frustrations of a female student in the late-1980s. Lou managed to complete two films during this difficult - the atmospheric gay love story Spring Fever (2009), which was shot under-the-radar in Nanjing, and Love and Bruises, a Paris-set study of the affair between a lonely Chinese exchange student and a low-class worker – but neither could be released in China. Since the ban was lifted, Lou has directed two features that have received the stamp of approval at script stage from the film bureau, suggesting a renewed willingness to work through official channels. However, the release of Mystery (2012), a drama that utilized stories from social media to interweave a case of infidelity with a joyriding, was overshadowed by last-minute disagreements with the film bureau. Lou made some minor changes – a crucial scene was darkened in order to obscure an act of brutal violence - so that Mystery could receive some theatrical life, although distribution was limited to certain cities with most venues only scheduling two showings per day. While these arguments were going on, Lou was already at work on Blind Massage (2014), an adaptation of a well-known novel by Bi Feiyu that was shown in competition at Berlin earlier this year. Some critics have commented that Mystery and Blind Massage have found Lou operating in impersonal mode, although the manner in which he took to social media to publicly air his dispute with the film bureau over the former indicates that he remains as nonconformist as ever.
Wang Xiaoshuai
The semi-autobiographical family saga Shanghai Dreams (2005) marked a transition in the career of Wang Xiaoshuai in that it was the first time that he was courted by the state production sector after more than a decade of being a thorn in its side. Wang’s earlier features The Days (1993) and Frozen had been banned, while So Close to Paradise (1998) and Beijing Bicycle (2001) went through numerous submissions to the censorship board before being passed in truncated form. However, the state reached out to Wang when national cinema needed revitalizing in the mid-2000s due to the market dominance of Hollywood blockbusters, resulting in the relatively smooth realization of Shanghai Dreams, In Love We Trust (2008), Chongqing Blues (2010) and 11 Flowers (2011). Of these four films, only Chongqing Blues echoes the disaffected urbanism of Wang’s earlier works through its tough crime narrative of sea captain investigating the shooting of his son by police officers, but the other three still evidence the sense of purpose that has made Wang one of the most enduring figures of the Sixth Generation. The director has navigated film bureau restrictions to examine China’s recent past (the Cultural Revolution in 11 Flowers, the ‘Third Front’ in Shanghai Dreams) and contemporary issues (marital strife in In Love We Trust) to become a prestige name at home without sacrificing his international art-house standing. In July 2013, Wang used social media to promote the ‘Let’s Ride a Beijing Bike’ event in the capital’s touristic Houhai district to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of shooting Beijing Bicycle. Enthusiastic attendance signified not only the film’s classic status the continued relevance that Wang has to a local audience that is otherwise largely enamored with commercial flash.
Zhang Yuan
A pioneer of the documentary-style that is seen as one of the main characteristics of the Sixth Generation – shooting on the fly in nondescript locations, working with amateur performers, incorporating unplanned background detail or noise as part of the overall aesthetic – Zhang enjoyed a prolific period from the early-1990s to mid-2000s, only for his output to slow considerably in recent years. Although his directorial debut Mama(1990), which chronicled the relationship between a mother and her mentally impaired son, was financed outside the local studio system, it was Zhang’s second feature, Beijing Bastards (1993) that became heralded as China’s first independent film due to its use of documentary aesthetic to chronicle the urban wanderings of a struggling musician. Due to his unflattering presentation of Chinese society, Zhang was banned from filmmaking in 1994 and came under further scrutiny after smuggling the surreptitiously shot East Palace, West Palace(1996) out of the country for the Cannes Film Festival. Since his controversy-baiting heyday, Zhang has arguably mellowed and worked largely within state guidelines, although he remained an acute observer of modern malaise with such sharp dramas as I Love You (2002) and Green Tea (2003). His recently released Beijing Flickers(2013) is the first feature that Zhang has completed since Dada’s Dance (2008), a stylish but comparatively slight entry in his canon that critics dismissed as a sign that the director was losing his edge. Marking something of a return to his roots, Beijing Flickers is an extension of an exhibition that Zhang created for Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art on the subject of Beijing’s less-affluent young citizens which serves to update Beijing Bastards for the Weibo generation. It remains to be seen whether this incisive, if somewhat unwieldy, drama will represent a fully-fledged resurgence of a once-vital voice in Chinese cinema.
Wang Quan’an
Wang Quan’an’s career – and his lengthy relationship with regular leading lady Yu Nan - began with the striking debut Lunar Eclipse (1999), a stylized urban drama that dealt with the nature of identity in the metropolis. However, their subsequent collaborations– Jingzhe (2004), Tuya’s Marriage (2006) and Weaving Girl (2009) – would be set in rural communities where daily life is largely defined by tradition or local hierarchies. After separating from Yu in 2009, Wang won the Best Screenplay award in Berlin for Apart Together (2010), a family drama set in Shanghai in 1949, then returned to wild China for the period drama White Deer Plain (2011) which covers the political rupture of a peasant village over the course of several turbulent decades, starting in 1911. While his run of ethnographic dramas with Yu were small in scale and big in heart, with human struggles being framed against stunning landscapes, the epic tapestry of White Deer Plain proved difficult to realize, resulting in an uninvolving epic. While his work has generally gone under the censorship radar, Wang found himself repeatedly cutting White Deer Plain to satisfy the requests of the film bureau, with an initial version of 210 minutes eventually being edited down to 175 minutes for commercial release, although a version of 188 minutes was shown in competition at Berlin. Wang has not announced any projects since, and perhaps needs time to consider how to best progress to a wider canvas.
Ning Ying
Although born almost a decade earlier than most members of the Sixth Generation, Ning is considered part of the group due to making her debut feature Someone Loves Just Me in 1990 and sharing an interest in urban milieu. Ning’s prominent position was ensured by her landmark ‘Beijing trilogy’ of For Fun (1993), On the Beat (1995) and I Love Beijing (2001), but she also achieved success as a documentarian with Railroad of Hope (2002) which was awarded the Grand Prix du Cinemá du Réel for its record of migrant agricultural workers traveling from Sichuan Province to the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. While her ‘Beijing Trilogy’ perfectly blends form and content, Ning came unstuck with Perpetual Motion (2005), a forced character piece concerning four women who are representative of China’s new money elite. As with Zhang, last year saw Ning return from a long break, although the state-sponsored To Live and Die in Ordos (2013) could hardly be considered a comeback. Based on the life of an incorruptible police chief in a developing region, the film was backed by various provincial funding bodies and is blatantly propagandist in tone with its one-dimensional hero held up as the guiding light of justice while state bureaucracy is presented as being blemish-free. Ning’s earlier work was largely observational, rarely taking an overt political stance to issues of demolition, relocation, or the impact of free market economy on individual behavior, but To Love and Die in Ordossees her slip from neutrality to shameless manipulation. Despite its severe flaws, the film was allocated festival slot at Tokyo and Vienna, but is likely to be written off as a failed municipal promotion exercise that has made more use of it’s directors name value than her actual talent.
Li Yu
Li Yu received on-the-job training before moving into feature films, firstly with a presenting role on a Shandong television station, then as a director for China Central Television (CCTV). After honing her skills within the system, Li moved outside of it, swiftly completing three documentaries between 1996-1998, then embarking on her narrative project Fish and Elephant (2001), notable for being the first Mainland feature to tackle lesbianism. Her following four films would be produced by Laurel Films, which also sponsored the work of Lou Ye. Dam Street (2005) and Buddha Mountain (2010) are sensitive coming-of-age stories, while Lost in Beijing (2007) was an unflinching examination of China’s moral climate that dealt explicitly with bribery, rape and the exploitation of the underclass at the hands of their upwardly mobile employers. Lost in Beijing was banned and Li was forbidden from making another film for two years, although the experience did enable her to establish a relationship with media-friendly starlet Fan Bingbing, who would undertake the lead role in her next two projects. Buddha Mountain is an ensemble piece, but the psychological thriller Double Xposure (2012) is a star vehicle for Fan who plays a cosmetic surgeon embroiled in murder. This project found Li operating in genre territory for the first time and proved to be her box office breakthrough. However, this was more to do with Fan’s promotional blitz that saw her appearing on the covers of 14 fashion magazines, as the film itself was a nonsensical mess with stylized camera angles failing to obscure the preposterous plot. It is hoped that this misstep is merely the side effect of Li adopting a ‘one for them, one for me’ approach to sustaining her career and that her next feature will mark a return to the complex drama of which is so capable.
Diao Yinan
Until recently, Diao Yinan would have been considered a fringe player in the context of the Sixth Generation due to establishing himself as a screenwriter of such popular fare as Spicy Love Soup (1997) and Shower (1999) before embarking on a slow-burning directorial career. His independently-produced debut feature Uniform (2003) and sophomore effort Night Train (2007) offered low-key narratives of isolated individuals seeking human connection through methods of deception against industrial backdrops received only moderate critical attention, perhaps due to arriving after praise had already been lavished on landmark Sixth Generation works. Diao then seemed to disappear, but returned this year with Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014), which he had spent eight years developing. A murder mystery set in a mining community in Northern China that follows an ex-cop who resumes the investigation of a cold case when identical crimes are committed, Black Coal, Thin Ice was awarded the Golden Bear at Berlin and prompted much discussion about how Diao had achieved a belated breakthrough by placing his social concerns within a genre framework. Despite speculation that the censors would not take kindly to Diao’s pessimistic vision, the film was approved for release in China shortly after its success at Berlin, illustrating how festival kudos is still a crucial bargaining chip for directors who operate outside the system.
Absent Voices
In any generation of filmmakers, regardless of nationality, there are always singular talents who seem poised for greatness only to retreat from the spotlight for reasons that often remain elusive. Blind Shaft (2003) announced Li Yang as a director who could filter prescient satire through taut narrative and its darkly humorous account of corruption in the mining industry is as powerful today as it was on initial release. Negative attention at home caused Li to leave China for Germany, then Hong Kong, and it was not until 2007 that he was able to realize a thematic follow-up in the form of Blind Mountain, a similarly tough rural expose in which a naïve young woman is kidnapped and sold to a villager in the mountains. Although he discussed plans for Blind River, which would complete his thematic trilogy, Li has yet to make another feature, with only his short film Helpless (2010) suggesting a possible reemergence from the wilderness. He Jianjun made just one feature, Read Beads (1993), before being blacklisted in 1994, but would defiantly shoot Postman (1995) the following year. His later Pirated Copy (2004) provided a meta-commentary on how many Sixth Generation works were reaching an audience in China through its focus on an enterprising bootleg DVD seller, but his subsequent feature River People(2008) would be his last to date.
This overview finds the Sixth Generation to be generally active but currently experiencing variable levels of critical favor or commercial viability due to a myriad of factors: box office success, censorship, experiments with genre, festival economy, creative relationships with stars, or the search for new subject matter. While the differences between these directors have become more evident since the festival fever that greeted their output in the late-1990s and early-2000s has dissipated, they remain bound not only through fundamental principles but by the necessary navigation of political shifts that continue to impact on their careers both at home and abroad.
John Berra is a lecturer in Film and Language Studies at Tsinghua University. He is the co-editor of World Film Locations: Beijing (Intellect, 2012) and World Film Locations: Shanghai (Intellect, 2014). John has contributed academic articles on contemporary Chinese cinema to Asian Cinema, Geography Compass and Science Fiction Film and Television.
Related articles
More in this category
