Why Busan film festival is a key barometer of the state of Chinese cinema
Caught between a more demanding home audience and ever stricter censors, Chinese directors have a vital platform at the annual South Korean event
Since its establishment, in 1996, the Busan International Film Festival, held annually in South Korea, has been a window into the state of mainland Chinese cinema. It was an invaluable platform on which China’s so-called “sixth generation” of filmmakers showcased work that could not be screened at home in the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century: director Zhang Ming’s In Expectation (or Rain Clouds over Wushan) won the first festival’s New Currents award in 1996; Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu took the same prize two years later.
Many mainstream productions are also screened there, with films by Zhang Yimou, Ning Hao and Gao Qunshu either opening or closing the festival in the past decade.
China’s presence at this year’s festival, which opens on October 12, has greater significance than in previous editions. With Chinese audiences’ tastes widening (as shown by the success in 2015 of the Tibetan-language road movie Paths of the Soul and comfort-women documentary Twenty Two), the country’s Busan offerings reveal how diverse the cinematic template has grown. At the same time, industry laws enacted in April stipulate tighter controls on what and how Chinese films can be shown abroad.
Pleasingly, the Chinese films at Busan this year are substantial and varied. They include a state-commissioned omnibus celebrating developing economies, family dramas about cross-generational conflict, and a gloomy indie title in which unsolved sex crimes reveal moral decay in a small town.
In Where Has Time Gone, Jia attempts to combine artistry with state policy (he tried the same in his 2010 Shanghai eulogy, I Wish I Knew). Supposedly made to honour the cooperation between the five BRICS economies, Where Has Time Gone actually zeroes in on the struggles of everyday people.