Beijing Film Academy 2019

By Intellect Books

The annual Beijing Film Academy Yearbook highlights the best academic debates, discussions and research from the previous year, as previously published in the highly prestigious Journal of Beijing Film Academy. This volume brings together specially selected articles, appearing for the first time in English, to bridge the gap in cross-cultural research in cinema and media studies.

The book is the latest in the Intellect China Library series to produce work by Chinese scholars that have not previously been available to English language academia. Covering the subjects of film studies, visual arts, performing arts, media and cultural studies, the series aims to foster intellectual debate and to promote closer cross-cultural intellectual exchanges by introducing important works of Chinese scholarship to readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781789386004

Book preview

1

40 Years in a Flash: 1978–2018: The 40-Year Course of Reform at the Beijing Film Academy

Zhang Huijun

The period from 1978 to 2018 is a 40-year era of reform that changed the destiny of a nation. As a witness, partaker, participant and chronicler who has been with the academy every step of the way during its development, I have grown up with the students, teachers and managers at the Beijing Film Academy (BFA), and, over time, the different positions I have held at the school have allowed me to truly feel the road of development under my feet as I have weathered the changes and transformations and seen first-hand the growth of the BFA and the People’s Republic over different historical periods.

For the past 40 years, the Beijing Film Academy has undergone a protracted process of institutional reform and opening up to ideas, techniques and technologies from around the globe over the period from 1978 to 2018, and this has shaped the school into a highly technical institution on the cusp of developing into a world-class film school. Today, the Beijing Film Academy has truly become the mecca of China’s film technical education and the bastion of talent training in China’s film industry. The Academy is strongly accountable for maturing the fields of film technology, film art and academic film research, and is the national ensign of highly technical, specialized film education.

Chinese film education is rapidly gaining a foothold in the wider world, which is the fruit of 40 years of painstaking effort by the BFA. In terms of education and training, the Academy has been carrying out its goals of pragmatic development, sound, systematic education and pooled strength, and from this noble purpose, it has made amazing achievements, incubated and nurtured crops of superlative talent and achieved unparalleled results. Beijing Film Academy-style education embodies the nation’s emphasis on the utmost in professional film education. This developmental process of Chinese film education is most certainly the result of changing teaching concepts, reconstructed historical value systems and diverse innovation trends.

In retrospect, 1978 marked the beginning of the golden age of Chinese filmmaking education. At the same time, it has pioneering and epochal significance in the history of Chinese film and the development of Chinese filmmaking education. It ushered in the revival of Chinese culture and has been integral to the growth and development of the country. Filmmaking talent in the industry educated and trained at the BFA has collectively established a new paradigm of film education. The year 2018 not only marked the entrance of Chinese cinema into a resplendent new era but also signified a new zenith in China’s 40-year reformation odyssey, a grand modernization effort of the country’s film education so gargantuan that its manifestation required the adoption of the Open-Door Policy and the sudden and sweeping reforms that accompanied it.

Educational reform and whirlwind development

The reinstatement of undergraduate recruitment

To execute the Party Central Committee and State Council resolutions, enrolment of the film programme was quickly reinstated.

On 24 May 1977, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who had undergone hardships and come out the other side stronger and more determined, delivered an important speech on ‘respecting knowledge and talent’. On 8 August, Deng Xiaoping hosted a national science and education symposium where he expressed his resolve to reinstate the Academy entrance examination. On 12 October, the State Council endorsed the Suggestions for Student Enrolment Work at Institutions of Higher Learning for the Year 1977 bill proposed by the Ministry of Education, officially winding back the clock on the historically significant standardized entrance examinations for national higher education. On 20 October, the motion for resuming the standardized Academy entrance examination was officially entered into legislation, and it was these efforts that paved the way for the standardized enrolment system for higher education institutions in the winter of 1978. The Academy entrance examination provided the possibility for young people in that era to place their fate in their own hands and it became a turning point for the country’s higher education system. Although there were only a few schools doing student enrolments in 1977, it was a potent symbol of something that was infinitely more far-reaching.

In 1978, the Beijing Film Academy reinstated undergraduate admission examinations for the Directing, Acting, Cinematography, Production Design and Sound Design departments as per state resolution, laying the foundation for the cultivation of Chinese film specialization and the revitalization of the filmmaking industry, the provision of prospective film specialization with a technically sound and distinctively Chinese film education, as well as giving film graduates a significant head start towards their future film careers. Unlike the previous teaching methodologies and Western film training models, the Beijing Film Academy has incubated an educational system from within its own distinct culture, and through this, the Academy has reaped great rewards.

On 18 September 1978, the first group of 159 alumni at the Beijing Film Academy – the ‘Class of '78’ – was enrolled and subsequently immortalized in the influential journal Cahiers Du Cinema after the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. To me, this is one of the 100 most exciting moments in history.

Determining a new location

The application for a new campus ends our students’ ‘vagabond life’.

During the Cultural Revolution, the Beijing Film Academy was ‘banished’ to Zhuxingzhuang in Changping, way out on the outskirts of Beijing, and, like a homeless child, life was troubled and unstable. There was no cultural milieu or educational environment; we were experiencing shortages of teaching supplies and facilities needed to run a school. Teachers would muddle through their classes, and students would plagiarize one another’s work, compromising the entire educational process. Even seeing a film, play or expo was a ‘long-haul journey’ into town. A professional film school absolutely cannot operate successfully located in the outlying areas of a city, so finding a more suitable location for the school became a top priority.

On 4 May 1978, the Academy’s leadership team wrote an official appeal to the Ministry of Culture, applying for the repurposing of a piece of land near the Beijing Film Studio on the North Third Ring Road to establish a new campus. In February 1979, the Ministry of Culture formally petitioned the State Council twice, hoping to allocate land near the North Third Ring Road so that the new Beijing Film Academy campus could begin construction. After the leaders of the Central Committee and the State Council signed off on the proposal, the State Council approved the petition on 9 July 1979. Under the auspices of the State Planning Committee, the Ministry of Culture and the Beijing leadership, the Beijing Municipal Commission approved the school’s acquisition of the Dongsheng Production Brigade Yellow Pavilion on the west side of the North Third Ring Road, where there was a seven-hectare plot of land that could be allocated for the construction of the new campus. Subsequently, the Beijing Municipal Planning Commission entrusted the design and creation of the new campus to the Beijing Architectural Design Institute. The BFA also established a site construction leadership team to work together on the project.

This was a decisive, critical and monumental vote of support on behalf of the state for specialized Chinese filmmaking education. It was also a giant leap towards building a world-class film art academy, which started the first chapter in the story of our Academy’s film education development.

On modernizing film grammar

Initiating the discussion on the modernization of film grammar triggered a wave of theories and academic seminars in the Chinese film industry.

During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese film production was sparse at best, but by 1979 film production had undergone significant change. To restore order after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the focus of film projects shifted from politics to the humanities and replaced politically oriented concepts with cinéma vérité style aesthetics. Films began expressing clear ideas about human nature, and the richness and complexity of life, all with a unified narrative structure and a knack for exploring new film language and concepts. Chinese film had entered a new era of prosperity. The filmmaking productive forces had been liberated as never before, and feature film production was showing a steady growth trend. Meanwhile, film theory research was reinvigorated, with an exploration into every facet of the craft, deepening the understanding of film art and the creative process.

Beijing Film Academy professor and director Zhang Nuanxin, and writer and critic Li Tuo jointly published the theoretical paper, ‘On the modernisation of film language on film art’.

When analysing why our film language lags behind the rest of the world, we can learn from an often overlooked aspect of the issue which poses the question: how do we score in terms of the theoretical research of film art? Do we have our own systematic and advanced film aesthetics? Is there a clear praxis of our film art? Or are we just flying by the seat of our pants? Do we have a clear understanding of the recent theoretical and practical development of world film art? Should we learn from and absorb some useful things from world film art? If we completely cut ourselves off from the theory and practice of film art from the development of film art over the rest of the world, and like a hermit adopt a reclusive closed-door policy, is this the right choice for our film industry? Does this serve to help our film art to develop?¹

This paper set off a violent wave of anti-drama backlash that demanded divorcing Chinese cinema from traditional Chinese drama, powerfully impacting the deep-seated theatrical structural model of Chinese filmmaking, and greatly broadening the theoretical horizons of our domestic cinema.

These viewpoints, theories, concepts and ideas have triggered intense discussions on film concepts and film language modernization. It has had a positive and far-reaching impact on China’s filmmaking in the new era, making people rethink and reposition film production, the film medium and film education, pushing for continued exploration into the question of how to enable Chinese cinema to keep pace with the global film art and to bring about the modernization of film language.

The development of the filmmaking programme

Looking towards the future, and furthering the course of development based on the characteristics of the filmmaking programme and the division of labour in film production has become the Academy’s mantra.

The most important aspects of university teaching are to be methodical, ethical and professional. Ten years after the Cultural Revolution, and following a period of intense reflection, it became clear to the Academy that, were the school to come to prominence in the field, it would be necessary to put the characteristics of cinema and professional development as the top priorities. The BFA soon realized that specialized filmmaking education had to correspond to the actual demand for talent in the film industry itself. To meet the developmental needs of the national film industry, and society as a whole, the school decisively expanded the filmmaking programme, adding specialized departments and disciplines that were urgently needed by the country. The BFA established the Department of Literature, and then with the base of the Department of Literature, Directing, Acting, Cinematography, Production Design and Sound Design. Soon thereafter, the Academy established the Department of Directing, the Film and Television Experimental Centre, the School of Photography, the Animation School, the Department of Screenwriting and Film Studies, the Higher Vocational Academy, the International School, the Department of Digital Technology and the School of Creative Media (Qingdao). The Beijing Film Academy has become a world-class film school with a complete offering of programmes and a diversity of disciplines in a wide variety of directions in which students can focus their education. It is fully capable of responding to the demand for professional talent in China’s film industry through specialized talent training.

Moreover, the school wasted no time in drawing conclusions from empirical lessons as it overcame the residual effects of the leftist ‘Emphasis on history and fear of theory’, reflecting deeply on the lag in the teaching of film theory, and began focusing more on the development of film history and the teaching of theory. Giving film history, theory and criticism a prominent position in the hierarchy of the school’s teaching methodology became an integral part of the school’s value system.

Youth film production model

The reinstatement of the Academy’s Youth Film Studio made it a leader and model for university teaching practices.

Founded in 1958, The Experimental Film Studio of the Beijing Film Academy began producing shorts and feature films, as well as newsreels for the Beijing News. In addition, the experimental film studio also skilfully coordinated creative teaching practices, resulting in the production of more than twenty short documentary films and science and education films. In 1978, the simple task of student enrolment was highly problematic, not to mention that the establishment of a film production organization affiliated with the university brought along a host of extraneous pressures. The primary task of the Experimental Film Studio was to coordinate the pedagogy of the different departments, and guarantee completion of the film assignments and student production practicum at each stage, and simultaneously coordinate the teachers’ creative practices. Only a handful of short films, feature films and documentaries could be produced each year. In 1979, the Academy took the opportunity to produce the Sino-Japanese-themed colour feature, Cherry Blossom. Subsequently, the Experimental Studio was officially renamed the Beijing Film Academy Youth Film Studio. Then, in 1980, the Youth Film Studio produced the feature films The Drive to Win and Neighbours, which were filmed in rapid succession. The Drive to Win was awarded the Special Jury Awards at the 2nd Annual Golden Rooster Awards – for Best Filmmaker and Best Sound. Neighbours took home the Golden Rooster Award for Best Picture. The above three films were all recipients of the Best Film Award of the Ministry of Culture and were quite well-received by audiences.

Since the 1990s, the school has emphasized a balance between theory and practice. Youth Film Studio provided teachers and students with the conditions and context for the creation of film art, at the same time ensuring that the films it made communicated an important message and maintained high standards of artistic merit and conceptual expressiveness.

The Youth Film Studio of Beijing Film Academy adhered to the teacher-as-servant philosophy. The films made at the Studio during its brief existence won numerous awards and honours at domestic and international film festivals, setting a precedent for teachers and students in Chinese universities in the production of films for the glory of the nation, and demonstrated high standards of academic excellence and creative ingenuity on the part of the Academy’s professional teaching staff. The studio also played a pivotal role in the revival at a time when the national film production was gradually being restored and returned to prominence. Its creative output alone makes the uniqueness and vision of the Beijing Film Academy completely self-evident.

The ‘Class of '78’ graduates

The ‘Class of '78’ and ‘The Fifth Generation’ have achieved iconic status in Beijing Film Academy lore.

The Beijing Film Academy ‘Class of '78’ graduated in 1982, and this wave of outstanding students, who excelled in every aspect of their studies at the Academy, began to gradually make their presence felt in the industry. Film theorists and media journalists alike began describing them by the moniker, ‘The Fifth Generation’. To this day, the ‘Class of '78’ and ‘The Fifth Generation’ are still the standard by which all other Chinese film talent is judged, their names repeatedly coming up in media discussions on Chinese cinema, and they are frequently the subject of domestic and foreign film theory research.

In the early 1980s, the world knew very little about Chinese cinema, and even less about the Beijing Film Academy. The films of ‘The Fifth Generation’, with their rebellious spirit and evocative imagery, were spotlighted in domestic and international film festivals (exhibitions) and they repeatedly took home top honours at film festivals. The alumni of the Class of '78 have authored a host of now-classic films and masterworks that have received numerous accolades on the festival circuit and won countless awards, giving a powerful voice to Chinese cinema on the lofty stage of the worldwide film industry.

The Class of '78 is a testimony to the effectiveness of the Academy’s filmmaking education and consummate teaching methodologies. It is the sterling debut of a distinctive and cutting-edge Chinese film education that unfolded in a wholly transformed environment. And what this spirit represents is: (1) humanism in education: a system that can come to terms with the contemporary Chinese social development and subjective cultural consciousness; (2) the ontology of film front and centre: placing the focus on the comparative cross-sectional study of film history and theory; (3) the internalized historical process of Western film development: the essence of Western cinema should be made a modality with which to transcend and transform the old film language forms; (4) fully synthesized new film technologies and film art: novel filmmaking methods should be noted, researched and incorporated into the new filmmaking paradigm; and (5) history and culture are prime: great care should be placed on the exhibition of history and culture within film productions, the development of contemporary Chinese society fully explored and the spirit of Chinese film rebuilt.

The training and education of the undergraduate Class of '78 marked the establishment of a truly effective teaching system for the school’s professional film education. The accumulation of a wide repertoire of scientific teaching methods and a volume of teaching experience furnished the school with tremendous value for the future of Chinese film education. For the BFA, the experience was the greatest teacher in the pursuit of a brand-new ethic in Chinese film education.

Move to a new location at Jimen Bridge

After a period of struggling and perambulating, the school finally found its new home at the ‘highborn’ site of the Thorned Gate Smoke-Tree.

One of the eight scenic spots in Yanjing, Thorned Gate Smoke-Tree was called Thorned Gate Flying-Rain in the Jin Dynasty, and its name was changed to the present name during the Ming Dynasty. Legend has it that it is the site of an ancient thistle gate, with dense thickets of verdant trees and rolling patches of lush flowers and plants. A stone stele was erected at the site in the Qing dynasty with a handwritten message by Emperor Qianlong himself that reads ‘Thorned Gate Smoke-Tree’. The site was a favoured scenic attraction in ancient times.

During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing Film Academy was ‘displaced’. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and the Beijing Municipal Government, the new campus was finally completed in the mid 1990s, and the Beijing Film Academy finally bid farewell to its former residence at Zhu Xinzhuang, which was already choked with weeds, and took up residence at its new home at Thorned Gate Smoke-Tree at the Northwest Third Ring Road. Beijing Film Academy students finally had a fully fledged place of learning which could see them flesh out their fledgling filmmaking flair and allow them to take flight. Everything was on the right track and thus began the expansion process of film education in China.

Between the planning and action phases, two long years went by for the new site at Jinmen Gate to pass through all the red tape. In the early 1980s, the construction of the new school began. Ten more long years went by before principal construction was completed. This strategic and decisive arrangement determined the developmental patterns and quality of the Academy long into the future. It meant that the Beijing Film Academy could finally step out of the shadows of the Cultural Revolution and face the realities of urbanization and cinematic internationalization. This was a strategic, prescient and benignant choice made for posterity, one that paved the way for the Academy’s maturation into a world-class institution.

Transferring affiliation

Getting in sync with systemic reform is founded on professional characteristics and specialized fit.

The transference of the school’s affiliation proved a decisive moment that paid great dividends for the Academy’s development. After 1989, per the State Council’s reforms of the national political systems and institutions, the Academy’s education and teaching management were unified under the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television. Spurred by the macro-environment and general circumstances, the school endeavoured to bolster political and ideological education and instil new convictions into the faculty and student body, thereby eliciting new creative ideas by focusing on social realities and emphasizing film culture. These efforts directly affected the school’s education system by reforming it into a fitting mechanism that matched talent with the stringent demands of the national film industry. This effectively linked the Academy’s education more precisely with the needs and demands of the country’s film studios.

In keeping with the new reforms and ideologies of the State Council, in the new century, all state organs were decentralized to local governments, and the school was transferred from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to Beijing. The goal being that of fashioning the Academy into nothing less than a world-class film school. This collective task was highly prioritized by the state administration and put swiftly into action for national cultural development. The municipal party committee and the municipal government suggested that everyone work together for this goal by creating suitable conditions to facilitate the smooth development of the school.

Carrying on the tradition and spirit of teaching

A school’s training mechanisms are its character and spirit.

At the beginning of 2001, the Beijing Film Academy, Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Culture planned to jointly produce a promotional film to create interest in Chinese traditional culture and to commemorate Teacher’s Day public welfare, celebrating the traditional virtue of ‘[c]arrying on the tradition of respect for the teacher and morality to future generations’. Professor Ji Xianlin of Peking University was cordially invited to participate in photo opportunities and carry out a series of cultural and academic activities. Mr Ji starred in a public service film produced with the express purpose of promoting traditional Chinese culture and traditional morality. With hope and expectation brimming in the wake of reform, respect for knowledge, talent and teachers had become widespread. Moreover, on Teacher’s Day, promoting the spirit of traditional Chinese culture and passing on good wishes to teachers had both historical significance and far-reaching practical significance. Professors Tang Yijie and Wang Shouchang of Peking University, Professor Qian Wenzhong of Fudan University, Zhang Jun of Peking University Library and Professor Zhang Huijun, who was the deputy director of Beijing Film Academy, carefully planned and wrote the shooting script, which was finally greenlit and filming commenced. Zhang Huijun and Professor Chen Huiyi served as directors of the project. During the filming of the documentary, the idea of asking Ji Lao to come up with a school motto for the Beijing Film Academy was used to motivate the students. Ji Xianlin gladly agreed to Zhang Huijun’s request. The subject of the motto was discussed at length and a ten-word motto was carefully selected from among a group of potential candidates, ‘Reverence for teacher and veneration of morality for all posterity’, which appeared in the public service film. Ji Lao wrote the motto in meticulous brushwork and submitted it to the school. In 2004, a piece of fine granite from the school’s courtyard was selected, and the inscription carved into it. Surrounded by the lush, green bamboo in the background, the site is filled with Chinese cultural heritage, poetry and artistry.

‘Reverence for teacher’ – respecting the teachers and their professional ethics; ‘Veneration of morality’ – abiding by an ethical code and the laws of the land, and being loyal to the Party’s educational causes; ‘for all posterity’ – carrying forth fine filmmaking traditions, passing on China’s excellent educational traditions, and carrying forward the Beijing Film Academy’s quality education methodologies. Every word of the school motto is geared towards promoting traditional Chinese culture, carrying on its fine filmmaking traditions, imparting China’s remarkable educational values, advancing the quality of Beijing Film Academy’s film education, advocating respect for the teacher, and calling on the whole of society to value ethics, morality and humanistic education. The motto is the encapsulation and poeticization of the Academy’s future construction, reform, development, pedagogical foundations and furthering of its educational and cultural institutions.

Commemorating cinema’s centennial

The celebrations of the film medium’s centennial crystallized the passion that the teachers and students have for the cinematic arts.

From 1895 to 1995, there have been 100 years since the world welcomed the arrival of cinema, and it is still going strong, with China celebrating 90 years since the release of The Unyielding General. The 100-year history of a cinema industry full of achievements and glory days bore witness to the power and majesty of the medium. Chinese filmmakers looked back on the 90-year history of cinema in China, researching the development of the domestic medium with a sense of great urgency.

The Academy held a series of academic events to commemorate this monumental moment.

The Beijing Film Academy, the China Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (CSMPTE), the Chinese Collegial Association for the Visual Arts and the China Central Television jointly produced the