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Cinema
The past 90 years or so have seen
such excellent movies as Angels of the Street, Spring in a Small
Town and Yellow Earth, and eminent movie artists such as Ruan Lingyu,
Xie Jin and Zhang Yimou.
In the 20 years since the introduction
of China’s reform and opening to the outside world Chinese film
workers have kept forging ahead and a galaxy of talented movie artists
have come to the fore. Artistic productivity and creation have been
unprecedentedly vigorous. The period from the mid-1980s to the early
part of the 1990s is usually called the second climax of the development
of Chinese movies. During this period, with the ideological emancipation
of the Chinese people, Chinese movies started to reach a stage of
unprecedentedly democratic and active artistic creation. A number
of excellent movies, such as The Founding of New China, Zhou Enlai
and Qiu Ju Goes to Court were shot. In the 1990s, China entered an
age of particularly active economic growth. Movies advocating patriotism,
collectivism and the striving for a happy life through honest labor
have become the mainstream of creation. The outstanding examples
of these were The Great Turning-Point, The Opium War, and Red River
Valley.
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The
8th China Golden Cock and Hundred Flower Award Film Festival was
held in Shenyang in Oct. 1999. The
picture shows Zhang Yimou, the famous film director who won the
19th Golden Cock Award of Best Director for the film "Not One
Less".
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Another
conspicuous phenomenon is the creation of movies with the themes
of “good people and good deeds,” as well as ethics. For example,
In the Days Since I Left Lei Feng, which hailed the spirit of Lei
Feng, a soldier who was always ready to help others and is well
known to the Chinese people, was very popular. The creation mode
of mainstream Chinese films has been gradually improved, and now
meets the demands of the market.
Another feature of Chinese
movies in the 1990s is the introduction of first-class foreign movies
to China, which have stimulated the interest of Chinese audiences,
brought more profits to cinemas, and stimulated film workers’ ideas
and creativity, thus pushing forward the reform of the systems of
creation, distribution and showing of Chinese films. The preliminary
establishment of the independent producer system in the 1980s changed
the situation in which state investment was the main form of funding
for movies. The investment in movies is tending to become more rationalized,
and financing channels and the themes of movies are becoming more
diversified. |
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