This year's Shanghai International Film Festival adheres to the positioning of "based on Asia" and showcases many attractive Asian film achievements that span time and space. Among them, the trend of genre creation of Asian films has become a feature that cannot be ignored. At the same time, unlike personalized artistic expression, a theme of national history, spiritual culture and social concerns that is internalized in the genre narrative mode is becoming more and more prominent.
In the past 20 years, the new exploration of Asian genre films at the level of thematic expression may indicate that Asian films are different from Hollywood commercial films and European art films, and have become an important pole on the multi-polar map of world cinema.
Historical Investigation and Asian Practice of Genre Films:
An Asian genre film that can carry a serious content theme is on the horizon
In the early stages of film development, for all Asian countries, film is a kind of "strange trick" that gradually enters the public's vision with the west wind and the east wind. In the face of the natural attributes of cinema as imported, consumer and entertainment products, the creation of films in Asian countries is inevitably influenced by Europe and the United States. On the one hand, under the squeeze of European and American capital, it has led to the sluggish development of the national film industry, such as the national film industry in Indonesia and Thailand, which was not gradually established until the turn of the 1920s and 1930s; on the other hand, they have not been able to get rid of the genre paradigm established by Hollywood based on the commercial attributes of film for a long time in their creation.
Genre film production must rely on the establishment of the film industry system, and the producer regulates the plot structure and image style of the film according to a certain theme program or narrative paradigm according to the audience's viewing interests and expectations. Although this early genre of film benefited from cultivating and perfecting the film consumer market, it was also controversial due to industrial mass production, the repetition of themes, the same narrative structure, and aesthetic lackluster. The famous French film critic Jean-Michel Fu Dong once pointed out: "Hollywood makes people's imaginations become single,...... Synchronizing the world's brains through its sophisticated, sophisticated marketing techniques, it is a form of commercialization and arbitrariness that will eventually lead to the disappearance of diversity. ”
Nevertheless, in many Asian countries where the film market was not sound at that time, the strong market appeal of genre films once made it regarded as a "remedy for the market", which briefly revitalized Asian national films. Taking the Asian films of the 1980s as a cross-section, Japan developed speculative suspense films adapted from best-selling novels to the peak, and Korean romantic comedies promoted the formation of the female star system, but this kind of work that was pervasive with shoddy and box office "money worship" was quickly rejected by the market, coupled with the external environment of the world film industry shrinking after the 1990s, the creative trend of this Asian genre film quickly declined. Therefore, although the mass production of genre films is enough to boost the market heat, in countries where the film industry system is not yet perfect and the national theme style has not yet been formed, it is tantamount to drinking and quenching thirst by unrestrained copying of genre films to expect to develop the national film industry and establish a stable film consumption market.
After entering the 1990s, Asian countries that had been exploring genre films several times began to review their national experience and local culture, breaking the inherent ideographic form, transcending the practical experience of film and sinking into the national cultural experience, so that a rich and complex artistic connotation accumulated in the image. These creators may rationally record the national and group memories in the process of modernity, or express individual emotions with powerful and powerful brush strokes, or persist in exploring the harmony and collision between the natural environment and human civilization. The deep cultivation of people such as Jia Zhangke, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kim Ki-duk, Wesse Shazanating, Garin Nugro, Ralph Daz and others in this field has greatly extended the expressive themes and structural forms of Asian cinema, and a deeply "Asian" image community is gradually distinguished from Hollywood genre films and European art films.
Therefore, the artistic transmission of local aesthetics, the lyricism of oriental culture and the depiction of national patterns in Asian films in this period directly affected the genre film creation after the gradual establishment of the complete film industry system in china at the turn of the century. During this period, measures from the state or industry, such as the reform of China's film industrialization, the promulgation and implementation of the Korean Film Promotion Law, India's promotion of the development of the film industry cluster, the rise of the Thai film New Wave Movement, the formulation of the Indonesian Film Revitalization Plan, and the implementation of the culturally enlightened policy of Mohagillani in Iran, have greatly improved the international visibility and influence of Asian films, and also provided a guarantee for the establishment of the domestic film industry system or system. Coupled with the inertial development in the field of genre films after the establishment of its industrial system, a kind of Asian genre film that can carry a fresh and robust and profound serious content theme is ready to come out.
The Transformation, Exploration and Transformation of Asian Genre Films:
From the dimension of following the rules of business, the cultural and spiritual value of the film is highlighted
The emergence of Asian genre films after the new century is reflected in their focus on interpreting the "Asian" aesthetic community of images, and in the concept of transforming the traditional Hollywood film genre. Based on the close relationship between the geography and culture of Asian countries and the commonality of anxiety in the face of modernity, Asian cinema no longer exists as a special case of diversified images, but has occupied an important area in the multipolar map of world cinema. It constantly strengthens its own expression in national culture, historical memory, regional experience and future vision, looking for gaps in the breakthrough of Hollywood's global hegemony, and also regards this concept of transforming the film genre with stylized mirror language and local themes as a historical task. At the same time, the new exploration of Asian genre films is also different from the classic regional image labels (such as Chinese martial arts films, Japanese sword and sword films, Indian song and dance films, etc.), which has achieved transcendence of tradition in terms of genre compounding, genre leapfrogging and genre sharing, while the accumulated cultural experience, historical memory and emotional experience have formed the core and hub of the film genre structure.
Judging from the official film list released by the Shanghai International Film Festival this year, many Asian films reflect the trend of mutual transformation and integration between the above genres and themes.
For example, Indonesia's "Dancing with the Devil" associates religion with Indonesian daily life to create a horror film atmosphere, depicting Indonesian social families at the same time, but also using the usual methods of horror films to create a sense of religious mystery; "Buffalo Boy" places the story in the traumatic experience of modern Indonesia becoming a colony, but the creator shows the bond between his home country and blood through the video style of Westerns and kung fu films with Indonesian characteristics; Thailand's "London Candy" inherits the typical "little fresh" style of Thai romance films. At the same time, combined with the comedy genre, the story background is placed outside the territory, reflecting the increasingly prominent international consciousness of Thai films; India's "Generation of Superstar Sanjay Jun" transforms the biographical film, and the display and reflection of Indian cultural customs, class characteristics and other content are hidden in the narrative of Sanjay's growth experience; Iran's "Sonorous Rose" combines the elements of sports inspirational genre films to discuss women's issues; the Philippines' "Alpha, Right to Kill" runs through the genre characteristics of police films and crime films in a personalized expression style; Japan's "Sonorous Rose" combines sports inspirational genre film elements to discuss women's issues; the Philippines' "Alpha, Right to Kill" runs through the genre characteristics of police films and crime films in a personalized expression style; Japan's "Sonorous Rose" combines sports inspirational genre film elements to discuss women's issues. "Bolts" mixes the elements of disaster films, suspense films and ethical films in the form of a three-act drama to discuss the heavy and far-reaching impact of the earthquake on the national psyche...
From the perspective of the development of film in today's world, the new exploration of Asian genre films has provided a new space for the continued evolution of genre films. On the one hand, when Hollywood was obsessed with technicalism and fell into a deep superstition of the industrial model, Asia established a distinct humanistic spirit and rich connotation in the process of transforming genre films; on the other hand, it surpassed the barriers of commercial profit-seeking with a higher ideological intention, but also highlighted the cultural and spiritual value of films from the dimension of following commercial rules. Today, the exploration, transformation and transformation of Asian genre films are still continuing, and they will continue to contribute irreplaceable strength in the process of building a multi-polar image map of the world.
Author: Zheng Jiong (Guangqi Young Scholar of Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai Chenguang Scholar)
Production: Tong Weijing