The Participants 2007:
Light of My Heart
By Alice Wang (China)

I was born in Jilin province in 1980. Before I came to Beijing, I seldom went to cinemas. Like most of my classmates, we had to study hard to go to college. Today, as I recall my secondary school time, I feel those seemingly boring days were really joyful and unforgettable. At that time, one of my joys was reading old film magazines left by my aunt. Years later I went to the Beijing Language University to study English. This widely-used language is very useful. It opens the door for a curious girl to enter another world, and helps her to find another way to communicate with people. As time goes, I slowly realize how important communication is in society. For me, language is a bridge of communication, and film is also a bridge of communication.

Working as a film critic in an English magazine is very occasional for me. Over three years ago, I applied for a job in "That's Beijing"magazine. My boss asked me, "What do you like?" — "Movies, literature…" Just as I started to tell him the story of my film script, he interrupted me: "Why not write film reviews for us?" Thus we made a quick decision that turned me from a film fan into a film critic in two minutes, even though I had never reviewed a single film before that.
 
My career started with collecting local cinema events, then writing film  reviews and report, providing film news, assisting my foreign colleagues doing interviews, and finally doing interviews by myself. It was difficult at first since English is not my native language and I had to work hard to overcome the language barrier. Our readers are mainly foreigners who live in Beijing. My responsibility is to build a bridge between Chinese movies and foreign audiences. With the encouragement of my colleges, the great concern of my readers, the trust of directors and my love for Chinese movies, I fond my confidence again soon. Once I had a chat with a director -friend, he encouraged me to learn from the distinguished critic Susan Sontag, writing good articles with an independent thinking. He also pointed out that there is a dire lack of good film critics in China, especially bilingual film critics. I considered his advice deeply. I think to be a good film critic in a bustling media means you should keep a distance from the authority, have your own judgment, don't follow the trend, don't be defined, bound and awed by others.

Susan is so intelligent that I will never be able to make the same accomplishment as she has. But I tell myself I should write from my heart, expressing what I think with love and sincerity, like a literature writer who always captures the light of life with passion and makes it shine among readers.

As an ordinary audience member, I often watch Chinese art houses movies instead of big-budget commercial busters. At work, I give more space in the magazine to the introduction of art movies and young independent directors. This doesn't mean I'm totally anti-commercial. Film is art, and it exists in industry. I'm really concerned about how to stimulate China's film market with my articles and take a larger audience hand-in-hand to the cinemas. Last year, China produced two hundred and sixty movies, but only sixty were screened in cinemas. Of the sixty, most are block busters made at home and abroad. We can find different reasons to explain this: it is related to a countries' movie history, cultural tradition, film policy, ticket price (above RMB 40 which is high for ordinary people) and an important reason is the lack of media promotion.

In China, movie lovers get an information about art and independent movies mainly from the Internet. The traditional media don't cover enough of that. They are more concerned about a romance between an actress and a director rather than a pleasant movie. How can you expect a person who only reads newspapers and never uses the internet to watch a new film by a new director?

It's a pity that Chinese moviegoers have very limited choices at theatres. A healthy cultural environment should embrace different, inspiring cultural products, the single film market needs various kinds to enrich it, society calls for more good-quality movies reflecting Chinese people's current life and the fast-changing society, and the media should transfer their eyes from box news of big stars to the movie themselves... .

In the year 1998, I returned to my childhood village after leaving it for seven years. I found the village theatre had already disappeared, forever. It seems normal in a TV-controlled society. But in a country with a population of 1.3 billion where the number of farmers accounts for eighty percent, movies have completely disappeared from their lifes. Market potential is huge, but empty. Meanwhile, I realize we, in the film industry, have so much to do in the future.

In the recent years, through the joint efforts of the different sides, little by little changes are taking place in the Chinese film industry. From 2005, the Beijing Film Academy with another two art schools started holding a Young Directors Forum, which provides an opportunity for people to watch new films. The once 'underground' directors like Jia Zhang Ke Jia and Xiaoshuai Wang have crawled onto the surface since 2004, and people can watch their films at theatres, and not buy pirated copies. In 2006, a small-budget movie, Crazy Stone by a non-famous director Ning Hao topped the box office in the first half of the year. Director Zhang Ke Jia's new movie Still Life won the Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, which arouses more public attraction. He will be mentor to young directors of the Garage Studio Flicks of the Berlinale Talent Campus 2007.

All is moving forward, full of hope and difficulties. I'm honored with the opportunity of approaching films so closely. I have a lot to learn and wish I can do more for films — the light of my heart.

Alice Wang

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