Asian cinema emerges as big winner in Berlin

Chinese director Yinan Diao, right, with the Golden Bear award for Best Film and Chinese actor Fan Liao  with the Silver Bear award for Best Actor for the film Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai Ri Yan Huo) pose after the award ceremony of the 64th annual Berlin Film Festival in Berlin.

By Andrew McCathie/Berlin

Chinese director Diao Yinan’s thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai Ri Yan Huo) not only won the Golden Bear but the movie’s star Liao Fan, who played a retired police officer trying to solve a series of murders, also won the festival’s best actor award.

The number of Asian films screened at the world’s leading film festivals had declined in recent years. Last year only one Asian director was selected for Berlin’s main competition.

But this year, four Asian directors were part of the 20-movie race for top honours in Berlin with the Berlinale also marking the emergence on the global cinema stage of a new generation of independent filmmakers in China.

In handing out the awards, the festival jury also gave the best actress award to Japan’s Haru Kuroki, who played a maid in veteran director Yoji Yamada’s The Little House (Chiisai Ouchi) about the secrets and lies in a wartime Japanese household.

In addition, Zeng Jian won the festival’s artistic achievement prize for his camera work on Shanghai-born director Lou Ye’s film Blind Massage (Tui Na) about a massage centre run by the blind.

The films from Lou and Diao were two of three films from China battling it out in Berlin.

The third Chinese movie included in the competition was Ning Hao’s Western-style road movie No Man’s Land (Wu Ren Qu).

The screening of the three films also reflects the increase in the numbers of investors in China’s booming movie market prepared to put money into independent film projects, analysts say.

China currently produces between 600 and 700 movies a year with the nation’s box office revenue surging 27% to $3.5bn last year.

The sheer size of China’s film market has also led to a series of movies deals between Hollywood and Chinese business leaders.

The screening of the three films in Berlin also appears to mark a shift in the way the Beijing’s authorities handle filmmakers who are outside the mainstream movie business but who - like Lou, Diao and Ning - have won acclaim on the international film festival circuit.

“They want to bring them back into the system,” said the Berlinale’s Asia delegate Jacob Wong. “They want to have them working inside rather than outside.”

But Wong also notes that there is little sign of relaxation among Beijing’s arch-conservative film censors, with the Chinese filmmakers also having to surmount considerable hurdles to seeing their movies premier at the Berlinale.

“If it is a commercial film then you are at the centre of society, but when you make a more artistic movie then it is very hard to reflect your ideas and thoughts,” Diao said in an TV interview after receiving his award.

It took Ning almost four years to secure official permission for the release of his film, which is set in a vast and lawless Chinese desert.

Ning put down part of his problems with the censors to the violence in his movie, which also at times draws on the black humour of US directors such as Ethan and Joel Coen as well Quentin Tarantino.

But the characters that Ning has chosen for his movie - such as killers, smugglers and strippers - are also not those that Beijing apparently wants to see portrayed in Chinese cinema.

Lou’s struggle to win the Beijing’s authorities’ backing for Blind Massage was only one of many fights he has had with the authorities over the years.

Set in the provincial Chinese city of Nanjing, Blind Massage also features themes such as prostitution, corruption and accidents in the badly regulated coal mining industry.

Spotlighting similar issues in his movies has also landed Lou in trouble with the authorities in the past.

The authorities slapped a five-year filmmaking ban on Lou in 2006 after he submitted his film Summer Palace to Cannes without official permission.

His first film, Weekend Lover, in 1995 was also banned along with Suzhou River in 2000, which gained him global recognition.