The Early Days of Chinese Cinema
Cinema was introduced to China in 1896 and the first Chinese film, Dingjun Mountain, was made in 1905. After the War against Japanese Aggression, a “golden period” of Chinese cinema took place in Shanghai with films such as Spring in a Small Town (1948) named the best Chinese-language film at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards.
The Rise of Different Generations of Directors
Starting from the middle to the late 1980s, with films such as One and Eight (1983) and Yellow Earth (1984), the rise of the Fifth Generation of Chinese film directors brought increased popularity to Chinese cinema abroad, especially among Western audiences, with films like Red Sorghum (1987), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and Farewell My Concubine (1993) winning major international awards. The post- 1990 period saw the rise of the Sixth Generation and post-Sixth Generation, both mostly making films outside the main Chinese film system and played mostly on the international film festival circuit.
The Growth of International Influence and Co - productions
Following the international commercial success of films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Hero (2002), the number of co- productions in Chinese-language cinema has increased and there has been a movement of Chinese-language cinema into a domain of large scale international influence. With the growth of the Chinese box office in the new millennium, Chinese films have broken box office records. On Feb 5, 2019, Chinese cinemas raked in more than 1.43 billion yuan in sales. China’s first domestic sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth became the box office champion of the Spring Festival of 2019.
The Current Status of China's Film Industry
Now China is the home of the largest movie and drama production complex and film studios in the world, the Oriental Movie Metropolisand Hengdian World Studios, and in 2010 it had the third largest film industry by number of feature films produced annually. In 2012 China became the second-largest market in the world by box office receipts. In 2016, the gross box office in China was 45.71 billion yuan (US$6.58 billion). The country has the largest number of screens in the world since 2016, and is expected to become the largest theatrical market by 2019.
