The exhibition of Chinese films in the US has not always been as common as it has become in the recent years. Cold War politics forced the two nations into an unfriendly embargo, so that the exhibition of Chinese films on US soil was non-existent. The cease of almost all artistic creation during the “cultural revolution” left China without a film industry for many years. Without a cinema to represent it in a global stage, this vast nation became an enigma to the international film community. This much was true, until China reopened their film schools, and gave students the opportunity to have their films be exhibited internationally.
The first group of film students who worked to reintroduce Chinese cinema to the world was dubbed the “fifth generation.” Their films gathered international interest, not only because they unveiled the style and point of view of inland Chinese cinema, but also because their films were of high artistic value. A certain dogma of Chinese cinema since its reintroduction to the world was unveiled with the film Yellow Earth. That film exclaims an artistic style through slow scroll-like camera tilts that embody the earth as a character that is in control of the tragic ambiance and the poverty stricken characters that live on that land. This film, along with a few others, had the opportunity to be shown in various prestigious international film festivals during the 1980’s, and with it came the exponential regrowth of the Chinese film industry.
Today, the Chinese film industry is one of the world’s largest in terms of number of pictures made. At the same time, China continues to maintain a high artistic pedigree in their productions. This is evident in one of China’s contributions to the Academy Awards: The Nightingale (to be distributed by World Wide Motion Picture Corporation). This picture is a heartfelt story about an old man traveling through rural China with a pet bird nightingale and his young granddaughter. The Nightingale emphasizes certain themes evident in contemporary transnational cinema regarding culture. In a world interconnected with the immediacy of technology — as emphasized by the young tech-savvy granddaughter in the film— Chinese culture is almost non-existent in the big cities, but it is rediscovered in the countryside. With that said, technology and the commodities brought by economic growth, have lessened the warmth and communication in families, which is seen in the transformation of Ren Xing (the grandaughter) as the journey develops.
A Chinese-French co-production, evidently falling under the transnational category — a trait it shares with a lot of international cinemas — The Nightingale also follows suit of now sixth-generation Chinese cinema — pictures such as The World, or In The Mood For Love. Like many films around the world, The Nightingale embodies a universality that makes it a film that can be understood, no matter the nationality of the audience watching it.
