How can China films tell the "China Story" well? What needs to be done to open up overseas markets?

On September 21, the 25th China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival grandly opened in Tangshan City. As one of the main activities of the film festival, the "China Film Forum" attracted dozens of experts and scholars from China's film industry. They conducted discussions on the theme of "New Pattern and New Development of China Films." Issues such as how China films can tell the "China Story" well and how to go global have become hot topics at this film festival.

Original title: How China Films Tell the "China Story"

Well On September 21, the 25th China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival grandly opened in Tangshan City. As one of the main activities of the film festival, the "China Film Forum" attracted dozens of experts and scholars from China film circles. They conducted discussions on the theme of "New Pattern and New Development of China Films." Issues such as how China films can tell the "China Story" well and how to go global have become hot topics at this film festival.

How to diversify and explore the "China Story"

In recent years, China films have made great progress, with box office prices rising from 100 million yuan to 10 billion yuan. Trophies have been won one after another from the Oscars "Golden Man" to the Berlin "Golden Bear" and "Silver Bear"... Some experts and scholars believe that China films have successfully broken through the encirclement of American blockbusters and Japanese and Korean films, and have finally ushered in their own "golden era." However, the box office of summer movies continued to decline this year, which triggered deep thinking in the China film industry: How can China films tell the "China Story" well? How can China films explore overseas markets? How can domestic films solve the embarrassing situation of "not being applauded"? In fact, these questions all point to the same crux: how to tell the "China story" well.

Ding Yaping, a researcher at the Institute of Film and Television Arts of the China Academy of Art, believes that from the perspective of globalization, how Chinese films can not only have distinctive Chinese cultural characteristics from ideological content to expression, from personality to style, tell "Chinese stories" well, but also integrate into the universal meaning, integrating different forms of cultural consumption with film culture, has become a new appeal for Chinese films to enter overseas markets.

At that time, as domestic films such as "Red Sorghum" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" successfully entered the international stage and gained widespread recognition from overseas audiences, China films eager to "go global" followed suit. As a result, many genres of traditional martial arts films or films reflecting the customs and customs of the old era in China emerged. However, in recent years, the stereotyped martial arts films have also attracted cold attention from overseas audiences. Therefore, developing and enriching the themes and content of local films has become a serious issue that contemporary filmmakers need to solve urgently.

Professor Lu Shaoyang from the School of Journalism and Media at Peking University believes that social and historical processes continue to affect and change the interests of audiences at home and abroad. Martial arts films that focus solely on visual impact have now lost market competitiveness. He pointed out that China filmmakers should start with innovation, technology, humanities and other ideas to gradually get rid of the dilemma of traditional martial arts film shooting, and further integrate more vibrant realistic topics into China's traditional aesthetic standards and values.

Lu Yidu, director of the Institute of Literature and Art of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Arts, believes that in addition to well-known stories such as "Painted Skin","Troubled in Heaven" and "Three Beats on White Bones" that have been adapted many times and moved to the screen, more novel themes and stories can be discovered from the vast treasure house of Chinese classical literature. For example, in "Shan Hai Jing","Zhuangzi","Chu Ci" and "Huainanzi", there are many China myths and legends as bright as pearls scattered. These are undoubtedly a huge treasure house of "China Stories."

At the 3rd London International Chinese Film Festival in 2015, nearly 20 outstanding Chinese films such as "Wolf Warrior","Taking Tiger Mountain by Wisdom","Only We Know a Place" and "The Year in a Rush" met with British audiences. The themes of the films involve many real social issues, literary classics and historical stories. It can be seen that the field and scope of "China stories" in domestic films are constantly expanding, and they are increasingly showing a trend of diversification in the level of continuous integration of China elements. However, judging from the current audience's response, there are still many areas that need to be discussed and explored for China films to tell the "China Story" well.

How to Let the World Understand "China's Story"

According to incomplete statistics, my country currently produces more than 500 films every year, but less than 10% of the films are released in overseas markets. As the world's third largest film producer, why is it difficult for our films to have a place internationally?

In this regard, some experts pointed out that the ability of China films to enter the international mainstream market is still relatively limited, because there are not many films with strong local or national characteristics and in line with the aesthetic tastes of audiences from all over the world. There are many films telling the story of "China" that are difficult for the world to understand.

Lu Yidu believes that it is not difficult to tell the "China Story" well with Hollywood typology techniques, but what is really difficult is how to creatively integrate traditional Chinese cultural elements into typology narratives, so that the film text can show more the heritage and wisdom of national culture. For local film creation, returning to the origin of national culture, basing itself on national culture itself, and taking the consideration of national culture as a kind of cultural consciousness and cultural confidence, the wings of imagination of China filmmakers can only be separated from the connection with real life and not separated from the nourishment of the national cultural soil can creation open a new realm and have stronger and more lasting vitality.

Regarding the question of how "China stories" can be understood by the world, Yang Liu, associate professor at the School of Art and Media at Beijing Technology and Business University, suggested that if people in the industry want to tell stories in a film language that overseas audiences can understand, they need to first study the cultural traditions of the other party and study the aesthetic needs of the other party, and then draw materials on demand. This is like adding some spicy cabbage to the green silk roses when ordering China mooncakes for Korean consumers. In addition, he suggested that on the basis of maintaining the connotation of China stories, some film versions from different countries can be distributed in a targeted manner to complete localized transformation and recognition; when targeting the same target audience, a series of films can be constructed., thereby forming a plate effect, which are feasible strategies to allow China stories to "go global."

How "China Story" explores overseas markets

Statistics from authoritative departments such as the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television show that the export of China films has been showing a "three underdogs" phenomenon for many years: low overseas box office, low continuous growth, and low entry into mainstream overseas theaters. How to break this bottleneck? Experts suggest that in addition to domestic film companies promoting high-quality masterpieces overseas, international cooperation in the field of China's film should also be increased.

In fact, domestic commercial blockbusters such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon","Hero","Red Cliff" and "Taoist Down the Mountain" all have Hollywood investment behind them. In addition to this simple combination of capital,"China-US mixed mixed stories + funds from both sides" and "Hollywood blockbusters + China capital participation" models have also made many films, such as "The King of Kung Fu" and "The Thirteen Gifts of Jinling". Yang Liu introduced that China film companies are now setting off a new wave of "collective sailing." They are further integrated with the Hollywood film industry and have entered the high end of the global film industry chain. Sino-US cooperative production has been upgraded to the 3.0 era. Yang Liu suggested that in the process of Sino-foreign co-production to tell the "China Story" to the world, four major strategies should be followed: establishing cultural confidence and exporting China culture as a whole; integrating global resources to tell China stories; expanding narrative space and expanding the vision of China stories; and using Internet thinking to innovate narrative models.

Currently, China has signed co-production agreements with 14 countries including the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and India, and has launched multiple co-production and interactive projects. Zhao Weifang, deputy director and researcher of the Institute of Film and Television Art of China Academy of Art, believes that the comprehensive and in-depth co-production of Chinese and foreign films has greatly promoted the aesthetics and cultural industries of China's film. However, a series of "acclimatization" problems have also emerged during the co-production of Chinese and foreign films. To this end, he suggested that we should insist on using a China perspective to narrate China and express China values. We should not focus on the novelty of the story or the combination of Chinese and foreign creators, and prohibit nondescript narratives or cultural mixes.

As the vanguard of the cultural industry, China films shoulder the mission of telling the "China Story" to the world and spreading the "China Voice" well. On the journey to the world, China films have a long way to go.

Editor: yvette