ABSTRACT
In both 1991 and 1992, movies by the Chinese director Zhang Yimou were nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign-language-film category. Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern were the first Chinese films to attract such international attention. Since 1949 the fortunes of Chinese cinema have directly reflected changes in the cultural climate, political control, and level of economic development. The changing relationships among party, artists, and audiences continue to ensure that a study of Chinese filmmaking can illuminate change in China's society and politics. The importance of the tripartite relationship among government, filmmakers, and audiences was well established in China long before the Chinese Communist Party victory in 1949, The first screenings were in 1896, when French shorts were shown in a tearoom in Shanghai to mixed audiences of Chinese and Europeans. For all but a few years of the nine decades since then, imported films have dominated the Chinese film market.
