King of the Box Office

    As the long-time chief of China's filmdom since the country entered its new era after 1978, Zhang Yimou and his legendary works have become icons of Chinese culture. Born into a simple family in Shaanxi Province in 1951, Zhang was admitted to the Cinematography Department of the Beijing Film Academy in 1978. He directed his debut film Red Sorghum in 1987, which won him the Golden Bear at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival. It was China's first mainland film to win at an international film festival award.

    Thereafter his films Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of Qiu Ju, Lifetimes and Not One Less received awards at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice international film festivals. His sharp audio-visual style, intense colors, vigorous characters and reflections of traditional Chinese culture echo with the 1980s values, and have created the "Chinese film style" within the world film lexicon.

    The irresistible march of marketization since the 1990s has increasingly subjected China's films to market and commercial factors. Zhang Yimou changes his themes and styles with the times, and nearly every change he makes drives the overall direction of the Chinese movie industry. His urban comedy Keep Cool and his romantic movie My Father and Mother received both unanimous critical acclaim and good market response.

    After Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Zhang switched his attention and followed up with his own costume swordplay film Hero in 2002. The movie took in RMB 250 million in box office returns, and that was in a year when the entire nationwide box office was RMB 900 million. His two other films of the genre, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, also achieved great commercial success. Despite the scorn they received for their feeble stories and flat characters, these films became successful models for the commercialization of the Chinese cinematic industry and garnered unparalleled box office success both in the domestic and international commercial film markets.

    Zhang has also tried his hand at Italian opera in Turandot and large-scale performance in Impression Liu Sanjie, and was hailed for his work as chief director of the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Today he is not merely a film director, but also a one-man bastion of Chinese popular culture.

    A relatively low-budget comedy, A Simple Noodle Story employed rising actors from song-and-dance and comedy teams popular in Northeast China, a tack which took audiences by surprise. Adapted from Blood Simple, a film directed by American directors Joel & Ethan Coen in 1984, the story takes on a whole new atmosphere through Zhang Yimou's kaleidoscope. The film has seen as much censure as praise, nevertheless Zhang's productions are always cultural events that never fail to do well at the box office.

New Year's Film Master

    New Year's films maybe deeply rooted in traditional custom and culture. As an agrarian nation, the Chinese people lived by the natural cycles of the seasons and worked diligently through "spring sowing, summer plowing, autumn harvesting and winter storing" before they relaxed and celebrated the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. It was customary to do so by performing operas and observing rich Spring Festival folklore. Local theatrical groups put on free opera performances during this season of festivity.

    Hong Kong cinematic workers were the first to borrow this folk theatrical tradition. The Hong Kong film industry was extremely prosperous during the 1980s, when actors and actresses would habitually gather at the end of year to produce one or two movies. Such productions were mainly comedies with happy endings like It's a Wonderful Life, All's Well Ends Well Too and The Chinese Feast. They helped convey the festive moods of prosperity, reunion and auspiciousness, and embodied the traditional values of Chinese family-based culture.

    Feng Xiaogang was the first one to introduce this genre to the Chinese mainland and it has remained a mainstay of the nation's New Year's film market. Born to a military family in Beijing in 1958, Feng was always fond of the fine arts, and began his career as an art designer and scenarist. In 1997, he produced his first, and also the mainland's first New Year's film The Dream Factory. The film cost only RMB six million to make but racked up RMB 36 million in box office returns, leaving it that year's box office champion. Since then almost all his films were released during the Chinese New Year season and always topped the box office.

    Although some experts denounce his cinematic technique, artistic sensibility or lack of ideological depth, Feng's urban contemporary comedies with their everyday warmth and simple humor have prevailed among mass audiences. His name has become a guarantee at the box office, and every year he broke his own box office records: A World Without Thieves in 2004 gained RMB 100 million in box office; Assembly in 2007 acquired nearly RMB 250 million; and If You Are the One in 2008 was a powerhouse at RMB 300 million. The total combined box office taken by his films has reached RMB 1.03 billion, making Feng the first billionaire film director in Chinese film history.