ABSTRACT
In 2020, China overtook North America as the world's largest film market for the first time, with an annual box office revenue of 20.417 billion yuan (approximately 3.128 billion U.S. dollars) (Yin and Sun, 2021). The rising global importance of the Chinese film industry notwithstanding, industrial practices, including marketing of Chinese films within China, are relatively unknown to international observers. In particular, the marketing of Chinese “art films” (yishu dianying) – roughly equivalent to “independent films” or “art-house films” in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere – in the domestic market has been neglected. How are Chinese art films marketed in China, through what means and practices? To answer this question, I put to work Kerrigan's (2017, pp. 7–8) insight that “film marketing is more than marketing communication in the film industry”, analysing it as a process that spans through the entire mix of production, distribution, and exhibition, shaped by the particular political-economic conditions of contemporary China.
