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Conversations with Peter Chan Ho Sun
The Warlords 8/8 - Page 15
Info
Author(s) : Thomas Podvin
Date : 27/10/2008
Type(s) : Interview
 
 Intext Links  
People :
Hou Hsiao Hsien
Quentin Tarantino
 
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Page 14 : Event movies
 
 Notes  
Parts of the two original full transcripts served for features in that's Shanghai and that's Beijing magazines, Kumite, Impact Movie magazine and HKCinemagic.com. I've omitted here the parts used in these publications, except for some questions and answers that helped clarify Chan's speech.


PDF version


HKCinemagic : Coming back to the discussion on art Vs commercial movies. A lot of people share your view. In the US the film is a product, maybe in France it’s called art. Are there a lot of fellow filmmakers in China and HK who share your views?
Peter Chan : I think in HK [we consider it commercial] more than in China. Because in HK, we always know the basis of survival in this industry. And if you don’t survive, how can you make movies? If you don’t make movies, how can you get an audience? How can you have any personal gratification as a filmmaker? So all I am saying is you’ve got to see the reality. I don’t believe in dealing with films as real art. Because art is never defined until you die or until it’s old enough to be define as art. So people tell you what you’re doing is art. You don’t tell yourself it is art. I don’t think even the greatest painter says “I am a great artist” when he’s painting. He’s having fun painting and people thinks it’s art.
 
HKCinemagic : Maybe you can call that a product of your creativity.
Peter Chan : Yes, it is the product of our own creativity. Films is a way for me to get a kick out of sharing my view of the world. And if people listen it’s great, if they don’t, it’s just my view. If you want to do that as a very expensive hobby, you need to see where the reality of the business is. Honestly, you don’t need to make money for the investors. It’s definitively not your job. But you can’t make them lose money. If they lose money, they don’t come back. You’ve got to go find another one. You have to break even.

We always thought it was a typical Chinese problem, and that problem would go away when China gets healthier and healthier in the development of the film sector. But now, you see that Hollywood is the same and you realize it is a global issue. And maybe my generation should understand that the day and age of our definition of cinema is over. Not that there will not have exceptions. There will always be exceptions. There is no sure death of this certain art form. Yet, in terms of very normal development of the word cinema, it’s gone. Look at the old Hollywood films, they are great, they are very traditional. They are not very fresh but they are great. They appeal to the human emotion.

And then in the 1960s, the French new wave takes a completely new level. Very innovative, very unorthodox and anything goes. With a complete liberty thrust into the cinema.

And in the 1970s, the Americans being Americans take that great freedom and mix it with all the mass appeal. I think the greatest American cinema, other than old Hollywood, is the cinema of the 1970s with Coppola and with a lot of young directors. These movies are all consumer friendly but they all have something to say and they are all great movies.

The 1980s got that changed. Spielberg comes at the heel of the American new wave and tried to turn it back into the studios, back in the big entertainment, theme park. Spielberg is really the one that’s started what is happening today. Which is great because Spielberg’s movies still provide choice.
Then on the more personal film level, in the 1980s Woody Allen was great, when he was still at his peak, and then copycats of Woody Allen appeared. Which are more commercial films like When Harry Meets Sally, which is still a reasonably good movie. And then it becomes more commercial like Sleepless Night in Seattle, more studio like romantic comedies and all that, which I didn’t like. However, you have to admit that it uses a certain commonality between the audience and the characters; you’re talking about your own experience, love and everything else. And there are still films like Driving Miss Daisy and Out of Africa. There are still decent movies.


When Harry meets Sally

And then you come to the 1990s, those films are gone. You have the blockbusters and then you have the art films coming on the heel of revolutionizing the Oscar Best Film every year into films that are actually more independent. The driving force was probably one scene with a lot of Indies filmmakers in New York and whatnot, and Quentin Tarantino. But all their movies need to be so special in the subject matter, need to be so loud and out there. Like a mother killing a son, a husband killing wives. Or the way the story is told needs to be so unorthodox, meaning you tell the story backward, the middle goes back to the front and so on. Films with structures like Pulp Fiction or like Memento.

Then you realize that there is a market that is never tampered by these changes which is the art film market or the film festival circuit, but even the film festival circuit has abundant directors like Hou Hsiao Hsien with slow movies about the difficulties of life. They slowly fade away, even at Cannes and Venice, to the benefit of very exotic and strange and horrific stories. This drives all these films to a level appealing to more than an art-house film-going audience, it transforms it into something that actually could content to the mass appeal. And that’s all good.

But by 2000, even those films are gone. Arty is gone. And now what we see is only one kind of movie. I think everybody has been driven by this global economy of commercialization of everything, because the world was a lot of small worlds before. A lot of culture. In Europe particularly… you would understand. But now, the whole world has become one global culture. Even Europe is changing. China is changing so fast because China is really head over heels with America and Hollywood. So Chinese would readily drop everything they are doing and go the American way. China is the fastest Americanizing country in the world, in terms of commercialism.

So I am telling you the whole world has become hysteria, with films hard to break even, movies have become more expensive and all consumer products become more expensive.

It keeps raising the bottom line. So when the bottom line keeps going up there is no more freedom, no more breathing space. So in a 100-minute movie everything needs to be entertaining, there is no pause, and no time to sit and relax and enjoy the film.

 
HKCinemagic : It’s been true in HK for a few decades.
Peter Chan : That’s true; HK has always been like this. But even then, I think it’s getting worse and worse. I mean I am getting to a level where it is like a pressure pot. That’s why the phenomenon this summer with the four American blockbusters finally puts the nail in the coffin. And I think that maybe this art form is completely changing. It’s not gonna be gone for good but it’s completely changing from that direction and there is no way to turn it back.
 
HKCinemagic : For your next film, what do you want to do? A commercial film or a personal one?
Peter Chan : I would take one step at a time. I don’t wanna plan that far ahead. Because it’s very hard and depressing to find a trend. And If I keep four big movies in the pipeline I’d rather kill myself, you know. So I enjoy making this film, but I can’t keep doing this kind of film. I am doing Waiting next, which is very against the tide. Maybe the reason why I can get it off the ground is because I had one big one before it. And if you don’t do something like that right after this big one, you’ll never get to do something like that.
 
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