Chinese-language movies in Hollywood

□Yangcheng Evening News reporter Wu Xiaopan

The trinity of poetry, culture and industry

Yangcheng Evening News: Why is this conference held at JNU?

Jiang Shuzhuo: The reason is this - a World Chinese Literature Society has been established at Jinan University, and Professor Rao Pengzi is the president. As an overseas Chinese school, Jinan University studies world Chinese literature, including the current Chinese literature of new immigrants, which has become an important task for our school. Jinan University has always been a leader in Chinese literature research. Our literature and art discipline is a national key discipline. One of the important directions is called comparative literature and art, and the other is called overseas Chinese literature from a cross-cultural perspective. These directions all emphasize looking at literature from a cultural perspective. The year before last, we established the Overseas Chinese Literature and Chinese Media Research Center, a key humanities research base in Guangdong Province. Its main research object is the study of overseas Chinese literature and overseas media. Our art college also has a film directing department. Therefore, in recent years, the focus has gradually expanded to Chinese-language films.

Yangcheng Evening News: How was the theme of the meeting determined?

Jiang Shuzhuo: "Poetics" is the study of movies from an aesthetic perspective. After the arrival of the media era, literature exists in a different way. It can exist in ordinary novel texts, in advertisements, in television, in movies, and on the Internet. Film is an externalization of literary text. Therefore, the study of Chinese literature and Chinese media should include movies, especially world Chinese movies, within the scope of our research.

Using the scope of "world" is more conducive to the cultural identity of the four regions across the Taiwan Strait. In terms of nationality, he may be a foreigner, but in terms of culture, he still has an identity with Chinese culture.

How Chinese-language films can become an industry is also an important issue. Now some people have proposed the concept of "Hua Hollywood", which is to learn from the Hollywood film industry in the United States. There is even a film production base called Hua Hollywood in Wuxi. Therefore, I think it is very meaningful to study how Chinese blockbusters go global and how the industry scale develops.

How can movies become an industry? We must abide by the laws of art, and we must also abide by the laws of the industry, because a movie is a one-stop process from shooting to final sales, and we cannot just shoot and release it like in the past. This is not right. From aesthetic expression, to industrial operation, to cultural dissemination, it should be a trinity.

Film theory research lags behind

Yangcheng Evening News: Will this conference be held regularly in the future?

Jiang Shuzhuo: We plan to hold a second conference with Peking University in Beijing next year, still called "World Chinese Film Research", and we will invite more directors to participate, which is to promote film practitioners and film theory communicate with researchers and jointly explore the future of Chinese-language films in the world. In the past, the theoretical circles, critical circles and the film industry always did not cooperate, or in other words, there was no direction or theory, so that would not work. Why do people criticize your films like Zhang Yimou? In fact, if we can conduct better research and exchanges and understand each other, it may help the development of Chinese films.

Yangcheng Evening News: Is there a relative lack of theoretical criticism and research on movies now? Or is it not forward-looking?

Jiang Shuzhuo: It is often lagging behind. Comments are started only after problems arise, without guidance and comments beforehand. Practitioners and theorists should have a better communication bridge.

Yangcheng Evening News: This is also a very important reason why Chinese movies have not been successful.

Jiang Shuzhuo: Yes, so next year we have an idea to allow film students from various universities to bring their own films to participate and screen them. They can also judge awards and invite directors in the film industry to comment. Because our focus is on the future, in addition to doing a good job in research on world Chinese films, it is more important to focus on cultivating talents.

Advocate for "the most unified body of Chinese-language films"

Yangcheng Evening News: At this meeting, someone proposed the concept of "the most unified body of Chinese-language films." How to understand this concept?

Jiang Shuzhuo: Hollywood movies already have a model, but Chinese-language movies don’t. Building a unified body of cultures across the Taiwan Strait and four regions is actually a matter of cultural identity. The world's Chinese-language films should have a unified body, a pursuit of the same cultural values, and a matrix of the same culture. Or ***a way to express Chinese-language movies is to form a brand of Chinese-language movies.

Yangcheng Evening News: But is the lack of "homosexuality" also a manifestation of diversity?

Jiang Shuzhuo: It is diversified, but there must always be something unique. There is a problem with our current cultural value judgments, that is, hesitancy. There is no centralized way of expression in our movies, so sometimes there is a lot of vulgarity. Literary, language, and visual arts can indeed be culturally different, and everyone has a different cultural imagination.