ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates China's attempts to win the Oscar in the post-Beijing Olympics period by focusing on three films in particular: Aftershock by Feng Xiaogang, 2009; The Flowers of War by Zhang Yimou, 2011; and Back to 1942 by Feng Xiaogang, 2012. The reasons for this are threefold. First, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games stands as a useful punctuation mark in terms of China's emergence onto the international stage as an economic and cultural power. Second, these films represent, in our view, an attempt by the People's Republic of China's (PRC) government to take particular interpretations of moments of trauma in China's recent history to a worldwide audience, and contain vital clues as to how the Chinese state wishes its history to be understood at an international level. Third, the Olympic Games broadly coincided with a significant change in the PRC's cinematic approach to history, with a shift in emphasis from wuxia spectaculars to traumatic narrative.
