Golden Roosters : China Film Flap--Art or Ideology?

Imagine the following plot of high-level intrigue in picking the Oscar winners:

Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences meet as usual to begin choosing the winners of the Academy Awards, but after a few weeks it becomes known that the award ceremonies will be delayed.

Stories begin circulating that high-ranking government officials don’t like the movie that the judges have selected as the best film of the year. Newspapers begin suggesting that perhaps the method for choosing the Oscars, and the judges themselves, should be changed.

The judges threaten to quit without handing out any film awards. Finally, the winners are announced--not in the usual gala ceremonies, but in a dingy, third-floor office-building conference room, with no film directors, actors or actresses present.

Largest Film Audience

Sounds implausible? Perhaps it would be in the United States. But that’s what has just happened in China, home of the world’s largest film audience. (Each year, 25 billion to 30 billion movie tickets are sold in China, at prices that usually range between 15 and 30 cents).

Few people here were particularly surprised at the recent flap, because it was merely the latest in a series of wrangles over China’s main film awards, called the Golden Roosters. In fact, as China’s film industry becomes more professionalized, its conflicts with the Chinese regime seem to become more numerous.

As China has opened to the outside world, its film industry has increasingly found itself caught between, on the one hand, directors and performers eager to make artistic films of international quality and, on the other hand, a regime that wants movies to propagate the message and policies of the Communist Party.

The party leadership sometimes voices support for the cause of artistic freedom, but it also regularly makes clear that it expects movies to serve an ideological function.

Should ‘Boost Socialism’

A few weeks ago, at a nationwide conference on feature films, Ai Zhisheng, China’s minister of radio, films and television, said Chinese movies should “boost the construction of the spiritual civilization of socialism.”

Furthermore, according to the government-run New China News Agency, some other unnamed “comrades” at that conference complained that Chinese film reviews, too, have recently been going astray.

Some critics review films “on the basis of their individual artistic tastes, instead of the party’s principles and policies,” complained the comrades. “ . . . Some other critics ignore ideological content, while elevating the ‘exploration’ or ‘originality’ of forms to an inappropriate extent. We must stress the unity between healthy ideological content and perfect artistic forms.”

These demands that Chinese movies serve as propaganda were made at the first nationwide film symposium of the newly created state Ministry of Radio, Films and Television.

Tighter Control

Until early this year, China’s government film bureau had been under the Ministry of Culture. In what was officially described as a bureaucratic reshuffle, the film bureau was transferred to the Ministry of Radio and Television. China’s television industry has always been tightly controlled by the Communist Party’s propaganda department, and film industry professionals viewed the reorganization as a blatant attempt by party leaders to exert stronger influence over film production, too.

Conflicts between the film industry and the party leadership rarely arose during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, simply because there was no functioning film industry at the time.

During that decade, Chinese film studios produced virtually no movies at all. There were no movie awards, either. Cultural leaders such as Jiang Qing, Mao Tse-tung’s wife and a former screen actress, denounced prizes as a form of bourgeois individualism.

It was not until five years ago that annual film awards returned to China.

Respected Film Jury

The most prestigious of the prizes are the Golden Roosters, whose winners are picked by a jury of about 20 to 25 Chinese film directors, critics, performers and film historians. The Golden Roosters have been given out every year since 1981, which was the year of the rooster on the Chinese calendar--hence the name for the awards.

The Golden Roosters are supposed to go to films, actors and actresses, directors and cinematographers whose work has particular artistic merit. Xia Yan, 85, the screenwriter and patriarch of the modern Chinese film industry, serves as honorary chairman of the award committee.

Over the last couple of years, the Golden Rooster selection for China’s best movie has taken on increasingly political overtones. Jurors are forced to choose between the movies known to be the favorites of the Communist Party propaganda hierarchy and those films favored by the film professionals.

A year ago, party officials are said to have favored “The Wreath at the Foot of the Mountain,” a patriotic movie about Chinese soldiers martyring themselves for their country in the 1979 war against Vietnam. Many in the film industry wanted to give the Golden Rooster to another movie “Life,” which delved into the importance of back-door connections in Chinese society.

Award Sparked Fury

In an attempt at compromise, the jury turned down both of the leading contenders, and gave the award instead to “The Girl in Red,” a less controversial movie about a 16-year-old girl’s quest to preserve her individuality. Party officials reportedly were furious that the Vietnam film had not won the prize.

But that skirmish was mild compared with the machinations this spring.

It began routinely enough. On March 22, Chinese film officials said the jury would begin within a few days the work of choosing the Golden Rooster winners for the year 1985. At the time, the New China News Agency said the selection process would take 10 days.

Then there was silence. Weeks went by, and no winners were announced. Eventually, stories began appearing in the Chinese press that made clear there was nasty infighting over the Golden Roosters.

‘Reforms’ Sought

In late April, the Worker’s Daily, a newspaper that usually reflects the views of old-guard elements of the Communist Party, quoted a film official as saying there should be “reforms” in the way the Golden Rooster judges are chosen. The official said that there should be a 50% turnover each year in the membership of the Golden Rooster award committee.

The next week, the judges fought back, suggesting they would resign rather than submit to pressure. A small note in a leading cultural paper said selecting the Golden Roosters this year was turning out to be “quite difficult.”

“There are many judges who are apprehensive, who are afraid the awards will cause many problems, and suggest that this year’s awards be postponed,” the article said.

By early May, the explanation for the delay spread in cultural circles in Peking and Shanghai. Once again, the jury and the party leadership were at loggerheads.

Movie Wins Party Approval

Party officials were fond of a movie called “Fascinating Musical Band,” a frothy comedy about happy, well-to-do Chinese peasants who form a musical group. When the movie was released last February, party officials turned out en masse for its opening, and the Communist Party organ People’s Daily gave it unprecedented front-page coverage.

The judges for the Golden Rooster, however, were unimpressed. “When it comes to expressing the depths of life’s conflicts, this movie is obviously lacking something,” said one panel member, Luo Yijun, according to a written transcript of the judges’ deliberations.

Instead, the panel had decided to give the best-film award to another movie, “Wild Mountain,” the story of two failing marriages in a remote mountain village.

In “Wild Mountain,” the husband in one couple is eager to try new kinds of small-scale business activities, while his wife wants to stick with the age-old way of earning a living by tilling the soil. In a nearby home, by contrast, the husband is tradition-minded while his wife is eager to see the village change. Eventually, these two couples divorce, switch mates and remarry.

Unpopular Winner

“Wild Mountain” was unpopular with the party leadership this year for two reasons.

The first was that it seemed to glorify rural entrepreneurs and to denigrate those in the Chinese countryside who keep on tilling the soil. Two years ago, the regime was urging peasants to branch out into new business ventures, but now, in the wake of a drop in China’s harvest in 1985, the official party line has been to encourage peasants to grow grain once again.

The second reason the party objected is that “Wild Mountain” seemed to suggest official tolerance of wife-swapping. “Divorce should be handled cautiously, and is only a last resort,” said a commentary in a leading movie magazine this spring. “There should be mediation, but there is none in the movie. . . . The film distorts the natural socialist relationship of mutual support.”

In the past, China’s film awards have generally been handed out at public ceremonies near the end of May, the anniversary of Mao’s 1956 call for Chinese writers and artists to “let a hundred flowers bloom.” This year, the anniversary passed with no film awards.

Awards Made Official

“I think time changes are normal,” said Guo Zheng, a spokesman for the China Film Assn., in an interview in early May. “For example, Variety magazine just reported that the Cannes film festival will be held at an earlier time next year.”

Finally, on June 17, the film awards were made official. The China Film Assn. called a hasty press conference in its own office building. Foreign correspondents, who had been urged to cover past award ceremonies, were not invited this year, but a Times reporter who found out about the impending announcement was permitted to attend.

The announcement consisted of a film official reading a list of prize winners to Chinese reporters in a low monotone, while her aides struggled to pull out electric fans and tried to get them to work. The Golden Rooster itself rested on a table in the back of the room, with no producer or director there to claim it.

Zhang Qing, the secretary of the China Film Assn., explained to the gathering that the awards had been delayed this year in order to give everyone more time to see the movies. She said it was possible there will be formal public ceremonies at which performers can receive the awards next fall.

Victory for Film Industry

And the winner? “Wild Mountain.” It was an apparent victory for the Chinese film industry over the party propaganda apparatus.

But that victory may be short-lived. Zhang explained that half the members of the Golden Rooster jury will be replaced next year. She said the new Ministry of Radio, Films and Television intends that the process of selecting film awards in China from now on “will be improved.”

For his part, Xia Yan, the head of the Golden Rooster committee and the best-known figure in the nation’s film industry, suggested that perhaps China ought to do away with the awards next year and just have a big film festival instead.