ABSTRACT
In the cinematic landscape, the real is never a pure ontological entity transferred directly from the external world. In contemporary Chinese cinema, this sense of the real as a creatively constructed image rather than a politically postulated, "objective" referent to the empirically verifiable external world would exert a tremendous impact on filmmaking in the post-Mao period. This chapter discusses the Fifth Generation's rediscovery of "the real" by way of confronting the natural landscape, which enabled them to project a vision of national culture distinct from that endorsed by Communist historiography. It analyses the Sixth Generation's passion for individual perception, their exploration of the mindscape of urban youths and their persistent claims to truth and reality. The chapter focuses on to a group of young independent directors who emphasise polylocality and the deliberate integration of fiction and documentary in their depiction of an ethnoscape of precarious mobility and private memory.
