U.S. MOVIES ARE SRO AT CHINA FESTIVAL
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese packed movie theaters Monday for China’s first public showing of American films in four years.
Eager Chinese movie fans rushed to buy the 20 million tickets at 10 cents each to the five films, showing in Peking, Shanghai, Canton, Chengdu and Changchun through April 14.
In Peking, ticket scalpers were hustling outside the Great China downtown cinema before the screening of “On Golden Pond,” one of the five U.S. films showing in the capital.
An audience watched in silence as Henry Fonda spoke frankly about sex, bikini-clad Jane Fonda displayed her well-toned muscles and other characters flaunted wealth unimaginable to most Chinese.
China-made films, while increasingly realistic, are still puritanical by American standards.
Actress Sissy Spacek, attended a screening in Peking of her “Coal Miner’s Daughter” at the opening ceremony of the festival, the second organized under a U.S.-China cultural agreement.
The first American film festival in China occurred in May, 1981, drawing more than 20 million Chinese fans in Tianjin, Peking, Wuhan, Shanghai and Xian.
Chinese cultural officials deleted nude scenes in “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Turning Point,” because they were “found to be inappropriate,” said one U.S. Embassy cultural attache.
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