Mark Parascandola ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHANGHAI Cofounders: Taj Forer and Michael Itkoff Creative Director: Ursula Damm Copy Editors: Nancy Hubbard, Barbara Richard © 2019 Daylight Community Arts Foundation Photographs and text © 2019 by Mark Parascandola Once Upon a Time in Shanghai and Notes on the Locations © 2019 by Mark Parascandola Once Upon a Time in Shanghai: Images of a Film Industry in Transition © 2019 by Michael Berry All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-942084-74-7 Printed by OFSET YAPIMEVI, Istanbul No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of copyright holders and of the publisher. Daylight Books E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.daylightbooks.org 4 5 ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHANGHAI: IMAGES OF A FILM INDUSTRY IN TRANSITION Michael Berry THE SOCIALIST PERIOD Once upon a time, the Chinese film industry was a state-run affair. From the late centers, even more screenings took place in auditoriums of various “work units,” 1940s well into the 1980s, Chinese cinema represented the epitome of “national as well as open air screenings in many rural areas. Admission was often free and cinema.” Films were produced by one of a handful of state-owned film studios— tickets were distributed to employees of various hospitals, factories, schools, and Changchun Film Studio, Beijing Film Studio, Shanghai Film Studio, Xi’an Film other work units. While these films were an important part of popular culture Studio, etc.—and the resulting films were dubbed in pitch-perfect Mandarin during the height of the socialist period, film was also a powerful tool for education Chinese, shot entirely on location in China by a local cast and crew, and produced and propaganda—in fact, one could argue that from 1949 (the founding of the almost exclusively for mainland Chinese film audiences. Foreign films were PRC) until 1978 (the end of the Cultural Revolution), there was a blurring of limited primarily to titles from the socialist block, like North Korea, Albania, East what we might describe as popular culture, mass culture, and political culture. Germany, and the Soviet Union, where an entire generation grew up with classics During this period, the entire film infrastructure, from the Beijing Film Academy’s like Lenin in 1919 (Soviet Union, 1939) and The Flower Girl (North Korea, 1972) curriculum to the structure of the state-operated film studios, was all heavily alongside classic Chinese socialist films likeThe Song of Youth (1959) and The Red modeled after the Soviet Union. Films were certainly made to entertain, but their Detachment of Women (1961). While films played in traditional theaters in urban greater mission was to instruct, indoctrinate, and inspire. 6 THE REFORM ERA The 1980s marked a time of renewal, reinvention, and transition for the Chinese The early 1990s was a period of transition and experimentation for the film industry. Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy led to a period of artistic industry. Riding on a string of major prizes at international film festivals in the experimentation and rejuvenation, which culminated in the “culture fever” of the late 1980s, the leading proponents of the Fifth Generation began to branch 1980s. In poetry, there was the innovative literary journal Today and the rise of the out into new areas, exploring provocative periods of Chinese history, from “Misty Poets”; in art, there was the Stars Collective; in literature, there was the the decadent world of Shanghai gangsters during the 1930s (Shanghai Triad, Scar movement, which examined the horrors of the Cultural Revolution; in music, 1995; Temptress Moon, 1996) to the political violence of the Cultural Revolution Cui Jian emerged as the father of Chinese rock and roll; and in film, there was (Farewell My Concubine, 1993; To Live, 1994; The Blue Kite, 1993). With this China’s first New Wave—the Fifth Generation. Directors like Chen Kaige and new, broader historical canvas also came a new production models, the casting Zhang Yimou made a mark on the international film scene with standout works of a pan-Chinese cast in order to appeal to audiences in Taiwan, Hong Kong, like Yellow Earth (1984) and Red Sorghum (1988), which began to bring Chinese and overseas, as well as more sophisticated funding and distribution networks cinema to the international stage. Alongside the formal experimentations with film that began to challenge the traditional “national cinema” model. To Live was language, style, and form that the Fifth Generation were engaged with, the 1980s funded by Chiu Fu-sheng’s Taiwan-based Era International; Farewell My also welcomed a much broader palette of film genres—the reintroduction of martial Concubine was adapted by a novel by Hong Kong writer Lilian Lee, produced arts films Shaolin( Temple, 1982), science-fiction filmsDeath ( Ray on Coral Island, by Hsu Feng from Taiwan, and featured Hong Kong actors like Leslie Cheung 1980), and suspense films Murder( in Room 405, 1980), and eventually paving the alongside PRC actors like Gong Li. As the Fifth Generation moved into new way to a new breed of commercial comedies like The Trouble Shooters (1989). At global territory, the 1990s also saw the rise of the Sixth Generation, a group the same time, foreign films from around the world began to flood into Chinese of independent-minded young filmmakers who appropriated a documentary- cinemas (and televisions, which were suddenly beginning to appear in Chinese inspired aesthetic to record the dramatic social changes around them and the homes) with films like the Japanese thrillerManhunt (Japan, 1976), which swept lives of marginalized individuals whose fates had been intertwined with those China and broke box office records when it was released there in 1979. changes, including artists (The Days, 1993; Bumming in Beijing, 1990; Frozen, 7 1997), actors (Quitting, 2001), rock and roll musicians (Beijing Bastards, 1993), ENTER THE DRAGON the queer community (East Palace, 1996; West Palace, Men and Women, 1999; Things were gradually evolving and the Chinese film market was slowly opening The Old Testament, 2002), pickpockets and criminals (Xiao Wu, 1997; Blind up to new commercial genres, but it would take a more seismic shift to truly shake Shaft, 2002), and homeless children (Along the Railway, 2001). By largely up the industry and set China on the path to becoming the true juggernaut that it is circumventing the censors and the state-sponsored studio system, the Sixth today. The first step in that shift came in 2000 with Ang Lee’sCrouching Tiger, Hidden Generation cultivated an independent spirit that revealed a side of China Dragon. Although not strictly a PRC production, the film’s unprecedented record in previously hidden from the camera’s eye. the international box office set the Chinese film industry on a quest to reduplicate its success. One by one, China’s leading filmmakers set to making big-budget As the Fifth Generation went global and the Sixth Generation went martial arts fantasy films featuring A-list pan-Asian casts, astonishing wirework and underground, a new breed of commercial cinema was quietly rising in the computer-generated effects, stunning costumes and set designs, classically inspired mainland. Cutting his teeth as an art designer for Beijing Television Art Center scores featuring the likes of Itzhak Pearlman and Yo-Yo Ma, and increasingly and later as a screenwriter, Feng Xiaogang would eventually emerge in the sophisticated production models to produce, distribute, and market these films. late 1990s as one of the most important pioneers of new commercial cinema in Almost overnight, the Chinese blockbuster was born: in quick succession, films like China. Through a set of highly successful comedies released during the Lunar Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), The Promise (2005), Curse of the Golden New Year, Feng Xiaogang created and conquered the hesui pian, or “Chinese Flower (2006), and The Banquet (2006) attempted to replicate the Crouching Tiger New Year Film” market in mainland China. With a string of hits like The Dream model. The Chinese film industry entered a new era, and in order to shoot these new Factory (1997), Be There or Be Square (1998), Sorry Baby (1999), Sigh (2000), spectacle-laden films (along with an ever-increasing slate of television miniseries) a and Big Shot’s Funeral (2001), Feng redefined Chinese comedy and commercial new series of mega-studios began to pop up all over China. film. At the same time, Feng’s frequent production partner Huayi Brothers, founded in 1994 by Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei, was emblematic of Among this new breed of mega-studios, the most visible during the early 2000s the rise of a new group of multinational entertainment companies in China that was Hengdian World Studios, a privately-owned production facility, which would began to wrestle the market away from the old state-owned film studios, many eventually be declared the largest film studio in the world. Founded in the 1990s of which became intertwined with new private equity firms. by Xu Wenrong, Hengdian World Studios has continued to expand and has served 8 as the backdrop for countless films and television miniseries. As the Chinese film film industry in general) is nothing short of remarkable. From 2012 to 2017, there industry continued its commercial expansion in the 2000s and 2010s, more studios were an average of nineteen new screens a day going up in China; and in 2017 were built, with many of them doubling as tourist attractions or theme parks, such a propagandistic action film,Wolf Warrior 2, earned an astonishing $874 million as Zhang Jizhong’s Monkey King theme park, Shanghai Film Park, Zhongshan dollars at the Chinese box office—making it the most profitable film in Chinese TV and Film City, and Changchun Movie Wonderland.