A Supporting Role for Culture at China’s World Internet Conference

 /  News  / 
The World Internet Conference in the east coast city of Wuzhen last week sparked a good deal of debate about the China’s influence on global web governance.  In its second year, the conference received a major boost in its significance when President Xi Jinping appeared in person to give a speech on the subject (Last year, he only sent a congratulatory message to mark the event’s opening)

On Screen China: ‘Mojin’ Boasts Major Mojo

 /  Box Office  / 
Get ready for an unprecedented weekend at the global box office, with a twist in China. While North America and the rest of planet Earth prepare for the outbreak of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Chinese audiences will be flocking to theaters for what is almost certain to be the highest-grossing weekend in the history Read More

Chinese Filmmakers Zhang Yimou and Zhang Zhao Honored in Hollywood

 /  News  / 
Over 20 years ago, Zhang Zhao was a bicycle delivery man working his way through film school at New York University. One day, the Shanghai native bought a ticket to Farewell My Concubine, his countryman Chen Kaige’s 1993 epic movie about Beijing Opera players caught up in mid-century political turmoil. “[The movie] made me cry Read More

Zhang Yimou: ‘Even Though Our Market Is Growing Fast, We’re Still Not Satisfied’

 /  People  / 
Zhang Yimou's next film, "The Great Wall," due out in November 2016, is an unlikely departure for him and for China—a mega-budget English-language picture co-produced by Le Vision Pictures and China Film Group in China with Legendary and Universal in Hollywood, and starring Matt Damon, a big Chinese monster, and the most Chinese of landmarks. Read More

Chinese Hits Miss Out on the Global Box Office

 /  News  / 
If he’d had the time after meeting American captains of industry in Seattle and Barack Obama at the White House, Chinese President Xi Jinping might have ducked out at the close of his United Nations appearance and into a New York movie theater to check on how China’s other soft power ambassadors—its movies, not its Read More

Chinese President’s Speech on the Arts: The Hollywood Connection

 /  News  / 
Last October 15, at the Beijing Forum on Literature and Art, Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke to a high-level audience involved in the creative industries on the role and direction of China’s arts and culture. While the occasion of the speech, titled “Talks at the Forum on Literature and Art Work,” along with some excerpts, was Read More

Finding Freedom in China on Film: A Q&A with Jia Zhangke

 /  People  / 
Like all of Jia’s films, "Mountains May Depart" contains strong social commentary. The film, which stars Jia’s wife, Zhao Tao, explores freedom: how one conceives of it, what one does to get it, and how others try to limit it. Read More

French Director’s Chinese Movie Balances Freedom With Compromise

 /  People  / 
In 2012, French movie director Jean-Jacques Annaud got a warm welcome in China after more than a dozen years as persona non grata there for having offended official Chinese Communist Party history with his 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet—the story of a German mountaineer’s sympathetic relationship with the young Dalai Lama before the monk Read More

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