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Thoughts on the concept of national cinema and Chinese movie The Dream Factory Since the commercialization of Chinese film market in 1997, The Dream Factory(1997) directed by Xiaogang,Feng was committed as the first commercial film in China (Mainland of China) after years of previously censored propaganda film (this refers to those films allowed to be screened during the Great Culture Revolution period). This movie was meaningful not only in terms of it leads the serious thinking about the future of Chinese entertainment movie, but also it created a new genre—New year’s celebration movie which competing with same period Hollywood blockbuster as a crucial representation of Chinese national cinema. The aim of this study is to explore how The Dream Factory was defined as the term of national cinema based on the concept of national cinema developed by Andrew Higson. This study both provided some thoughts about Chinese national cinema and thoughts about Higson’s concept of national cinema. Previous film studies intend to look at national cinema in four terms: economic terms (production: where and by whom those films are made), text based approach(distribution: what the films is about, which films are shown), exhibition/consumption-based approach(which film audience are watching) and criticism-led approach(art is beyond the nations), Hinson argued that these approaches are inadequate because they used the concept prescriptively rather than descriptively which omitted the description of actual cinematic experience of popular audiences. (Higson,1989,p37) Instead, he suggested two method of identifying a national cinema. One is to compare and contrast one cinema to another (he also pointed out that there was a paradox behind the first m... ... middle of paper ... ...a joke of Eastern and Western’s different ideology and world view. P4 is the scene of traditional Chinese wedding. From those elements we could see the Chinese identity without comparing with other cinema. Because of the industrial structure (the state’s role in the film production) and those cultural elements, The Dream Factory could stand on its own and not colonized by Hollywood or other blockbusters. Conclusion This essay briefly introduced model suggested by Andrew Higson on the concept of national cinema. It provided three method of looking into a specific film and verifies if it’s a national cinema—examine the production, distribution, exhibition and audience, apart from those there were another two method suggested by Higson, comparing with another cinema and relate the cinema to the certain political, economy of and cultural identity of the certain state.

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