China’s cinematic revolution1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteEver since the 1920s, Chinese film history has been grouped into large, monolithic blocks, as imposing as the Great Wall. There’s the First Generation of silent-movie pioneers, the Fifth Generation of “post-Maoist humanists,” the Sixth Generation that sprang from the cultural wreckage of Tiananmen Square, and so on – coinages used both in and outside China.
But it may be time to retire such static terminology, judging from the dozen highly individualistic, genre-mashing works that make up the series “Between Disorder and Unexpected Pleasures: Tales From the New Chinese Cinema.”
The program, which opens April 6 at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles, offers a sense of how Chinese independent filmmakers are stretching the limits of the art form while overcoming undernourished budgets and steering around – or perhaps soaring over – the heads of hard-eyed government censors.
