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HAVING won a number of prestigious film awards, such as the Golden Bear of the Berlin Film Festival and the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival, a group of young film directors called the Sixth Generation have in recent years advanced to a leading position in contemporary Chinese film industry. Meanwhile, in the academy, the controversy over the questions “What does the label of the Sixth Generation really mean?” and “What is the best way to characterize its aesthetics?” continues to preoccupy scholars and has not yet been resolved. Other important questions such as “How and why did the Sixth Generation appear?”, “Has it changed much since it emerged in the early of 1990s?”, and “If it has changed, why has it changed?” have so far remained unanswered. To base the discussion of the Sixth Generation on a solid ground, the concept of the “generation” itself should be clarified.
The “Generation” in Chinese Film History
The concept of “generation” comes from the need to study the Fifth Generation. In the mid-1980s, films such as One and Eight (Yige he bage, dir. Zhang Junzhao, 1983) and Yellow Earth (Huang tudi, dir. Chen Kaige, 1984) shot by some young directors shook China’s film industry. These directors belonged to such a different style than their predecessors that the critics needed a way to distinguish them from other directors. Therefore, in the 1980s, the critics assessed the whole of Chinese film history and divided it into five generations.(2) The First Generation referred to the pioneers of Chinese film who began working in the industry around 1905 when film was initially introduced into China. The Second Generation referred to filmmakers who began their careers during the 1930s when films with sound became popular and left-wing thoughts entered the film industry. Directors who made films in China mainly between 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was founded and 1966 when the Cultural Revolution broke out, were classified as the Third Generation. Directors in the generation who began making films after the Cultural Revolution and preceding the Fifth Generation were classified as the Fourth Generation.(3) The Fifth Generation referred to the directors who graduated in 1982 from the Beijing Film Academy and began producing their films around the middle of the 1980s.
On the surface, “generation” refers to a specific group of directors and it is mainly defined by chronological order. However, there is a problem with the designation of “generation” if it only emphasizes the time period when given directors began producing their films. The directors who began producing films in the same time period may have different characteristics, and different generations may produce films in the same period.(4) Therefore, the word “generation” cannot be used to refer to all the directors active during the same time period if it is to be used to pick out an aesthetically significant phenomenon or groups of individuals; it should only refer to the directors who share similar characteristics of mode of film production, theme, film language and so on which can be called their “style”. In other words, besides the referring to chronological order, “generation” also indicates a specific style which is shared by specific directors at the same time period.(5)
Film style is strongly influenced by socio-cultural elements. This is especially true in China where different styles of different generations in cinema are connected with the different stages of history, polity, and culture. For example, most members of the Fifth Generation experienced the Cultural Revolution and as educated urban youth were resettled in rural areas. This experience shaped their world view and compelled them to join the cultural reflection movement in the 1980s,(6) which was initiated by intellectuals.(7) As Xiao-peng Lu points out:
In the post-Mao era, a new wave of film production came forth in Chinese cinema and the most noticeable of it is the Fifth Generation in the 1980s (most films of this generation were shot by the graduates who were admitted in 1978 to the Beijing Film Academy). During this period, intellectuals started up an extensive movement of “Cultural reflection” and “Historical reflection”, which spread to the whole country. The members of the “Fifth Generation” were important participants and explorers in this movement. In the fierce criticism of traditional culture, they created their own style: a kind of “autobiography of the nation”—the national film of China, as the nation’s self-reflection.(8)
Similarly, the style of the Second Generation was shaped by Marxism and other left-wing thought; the liberation of 1949 stipulated the leading position of the socialist aesthetics in the films of the Third Generation. And humanist thought had a powerful influence on the Fourth Generation film.(9) Because the social culture elements have such a powerful influence on the process of formation and styles of different generations in Chinese film history, the essence of a generation should always be explained by the relationship between its aesthetic style and its historical context. The strength of the term of “generation” is that it can suggest these historical influences on film production in different time periods in China.
The Problems with Critical Studies of the Sixth Generation
In studying the Sixth Generation, people always meet these two questions: “Who is the Sixth Generation?” and “What is the Sixth Generation film?” The former refers to a group of directors; the latter refers to a style of film. Logically, the answer to “Who is the Sixth Generation?” should depend on the understanding of “What is the Sixth Generation film?” That is to say, there must be some characteristics in the films of one director or of a group of directors that allows one to distinguish them from other directors and to call them by the same name, that is, the Sixth Generation.
From the chronological perspective, the question “Who is the Sixth Generation?” has a clear answer. “After Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige graduated in 1982, the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) admitted a new class in 1985 that included Zhang Yuan and others, and another class was admitted in 1987. The two classes make up the so-called Sixth Generation.”(10) However, by the end of the 1990s, with more and more young directors such as Zhang Yang and Lu Chuan being placed in the category of Sixth Generation, the impulse to stretch the number of names on the list of the Sixth Generation increased greatly...
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1. This article is the slightly edited Introduction to a longer unpublished study entitled “The Transformation of the ‘Sixth Generation’ of Film-Makers” and reproduced here with the kind permission of its author.
2. Yang Yuanying, “Bainian liudai zhongguo yingxiang: guanyu Zhongguo daoyan de daiji puxi yanjiu” (Six Generations in Centurial Chinese Film: A Genealogical Study of Chinese Film Directors) Dangdai dianying (Contemporary Cinema), No. 6, 2002.
3. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) film production was halted except for a few “model opera” films, which were films created to celebrate the Maoist regime. The Fourth Generation only got their chance to produce films after the Cultural Revolution and by that time they were already middle-aged. Although they had different aesthetic taste from that of the Fifth Generation, the works of the two generations overlapped.
4. Guo Yue, “Zhongguo dianyingshi yanjiu zhong daoyan daiji huafenfa de zhiyi” (Questioning the Idea of “The Generations” of Chinese Filmmakers), Dangdai dianying (Contemporary Film), No. 11, 2006, pp. 121-123.
5. Yang, “Bainian liudai Zhongguo yingxiang”, p. 99.
6. The main characteristic of the “cultural reflection movement” was to sort out the merits and demerits of traditional Chinese culture, and discuss its relevance to reforms in economy and polity. This movement was regarded as part of the new enlightenment of the 1980s which I will discuss later.
7. Chen Kaige’s autobiography Shaonian Kaige (The Youth of Kaige) and Ni Zhen’s Diwudai qianshi—Dianying xueyuan de gushi (The Story of Beijing Film Academy—the Pre-History of the Fifth Generation) describe the experience of the Fifth Generation in Cultural Revolution.
8. Lu Xiao-peng, “Zhongguo dianying yibainian (1896-1996) yu kuaguo dianying yanjiu: yige lishi daoyin” (One Hundred Years of Chinese Film and Study of Transnational Film: A Historical Introduction). http://www.usc.cuhk.edu.hk/wk_wzdetails
9. In the 1980s’ Chinese literature and film, works expressed mainly “humanitarianism” (rendao zhuyi) which advocates that human beings should be respected and deserve to be treated with dignity. However, in the study of Chinese literature, this “humanitarianism” has been conveniently translated as “humanism” (renben zhuyi). In my thesis, I use “humanism” to describe Chinese literature and film following this tradition. In fact, this “humanitarianism” (rendao zhuyi) “may have little to do with the ‘humanism’ (renben zhuyi) of the American-educated ‘liberals’, which is close to the conservative definition of “humanities” in Western academia. (Leo Ou-fan Lee, Surfaces, Vol. 207, v.1.0A, November 23rd 1995.) Moreover, in the 1980s’ China, the discussion about the relationship between humanism and Marxism also used the term “humanism” close to its meaning in Western academia.
10. Zhang Zhen, “Introduction. Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of Transformation” in The Urban Generation, Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, Zhang Zhen ed., Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2007, p. 40.
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Liu Wu is a PhD student in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. In 1996, he obtained a MA at the Beijing Film Academy. In 1996-2006, he was Documentary film director in Central TV Station of China (CCTV). Then in 1998 he prepared an MA at the University of Victoria. In 1997 his atrticle “Huang Jianxin’s Films” was published in Film Art (March,1997). |
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