Commercializing the “Main Melody Films: Chinese Cinema in Transformation”

Teng Jimeng will give a talk on Chinese cinema at Stanford University.

TENG Jimeng
Associate Professor, Center for American Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University

The ongoing development of Chinese cinema's commercial entertainment trend is both the result and the manifestation of the Chinese film industry's shifting economic and cultural orientations. The commercialization of the film industry directly contributed to the surge of “state-funded propaganda blockbuster-commercialized main melody films.” A case in point is the all time Chinese box-office champion- The Founding of a Republic (2009), which is widely acclaimed as the most successful main melody film ever made in the post-Socialist China. Does The Founding of a Republic indicate a tactical shift for China's film bureau with regards to getting its message across? Or a paradigm shift for Chinese filmmakers to respond to the industry's marketization agenda? In this presentation, I will seek to examine not only the multiple reasons behind the making of the state-funded "propaganda blockbuster," but also the dilemma it creates for the future of Chinese filmmaking.