ABSTRACT
Films (and film festivals) would seem an ideal way to project China’s image internationally. Moving images, in engaging stores sanctioned by Beijing, seemed a highly effective way to enhance foreigners’ positive attitudes towards the People’s Republic. The reality has been different. When international film festivals in the 1980s started to take an interest in films from China they became occasions for the display of allegedly dissident views of Chinese society and history. The Chinese government’s efforts to shape film selection rarely worked. Technological change in the twenty-first century – in the form of the digital camera and the Internet – has ensured that the portrayals of China seen on global screens were far from the soft power ideal envisioned by officials in Beijing. Starting with an outline of China’s participation in international film festivals prior to the mid-1980s, this chapter will discuss the foreign impact of the rise of the Fifth Generation Chinese New Wave. The emergence of independent Chinese filmmaking over the past two decades shows the challenges Beijing has faced in hoping to project soft power through film. Overall, these efforts (official and unofficial) have achieved only limited success.
