CINEMA COMRADES

Increasing film imports show closer cooperation between China and Russia

Counting the release of figure skating romance Ice on Friday and other films coming down the pipeline, it looks like more than five Russian films will be imported into the Chinese mainland this year, a prominent increase over the past two years.

Entering 2018 so far, three Russian films – Salyut 7, Prityazhenie and Ice – have screened in mainland theaters, while films that already have release dates include The Spacewalker and Chinese-Russian co-production Journey to China: The Mystery of Iron Mask starring Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The years 2016 and 2017, however, witnessed just four Russian titles in total hitting Chinese mainland cinemas for not-very-impressive box-office performances. Russian action blockbuster

Viking, for instance, only raked in a mere 14 million yuan ($2.2 million) when it debuted in December 2017.

Box-office troubles

A better example is On – drakon. One the most discussed fantasy romance films released in the mainland in 2016, the film grabbed 60 million yuan to become the second highestearning Russian film in China following Stalingrad in 2013. However, even

Stalingrad’s 72 million yuan box-office take can’t compare to the performance of its Hollywood counterparts.

“The Russian Ministry of Culture has always wanted China to increase Russian films’ market share in the country, but due to the fact that many imported Russian movies haven’t fared well in China, most are now screened at film festivals in the country instead of cinemas,” Gong Jiajia, cultural counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Russia, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Unlike their parents in their 50s and 60s who once lived during a time when Soviet culture swept the country like a fever, young Chinese today – the largest demographic for film market – have less of a connection with Russian culture, a possible reason for why Russian films have been given the cold shoulder in recent years, according to Gong.

Political push

This year, Chinese moviegoers may have the chance to see more Russian titles in part due to a political push by authorities.

According to a report from Russian news agency TASS from January, Zhang Hongsen, deputy head of the then State Administration of Radio and Television the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), specifically noted during a meeting with Andrei Denisov, the Russian Ambassador in Beijing, that China “will facilitate their [Russian cinematic works] broad release here in Chinese language versions so that as large an audience as possible can see these films.”

“It’s natural for there to be increased film industry cooperation between the two countries as SinoRussian relations have progressed and economic cooperation has deepened,” Li Xing, director of the Eurasian Studies Center at Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

While the US movies still remain the dominant force among imported films into the mainland, considering the ongoing trade war between China and the US as well as the diplomatic war between the US and Russia, the growing import of Russian films into mainland could also be viewed as a part of China’s cultural balancing strategy, Li said.

On the other hand, film cooperation has long been high on the agendas of the two countries’ cultural authorities. The recently replaced Chinese media watchdog SAPPRFT and the Russian cultural ministry used to hold regular meetings to discuss cooperation in the industry, Gong told the Global Times.

“Russian cultural authorities hope to revive the glory of Russian films, which is also part of their efforts to reshape their national image,” Gong said.

It’s also possible that the increase in imported Russian films is not solely about politics.

Both Li and Gong pointed out that the increase in quality of Russian films could also be a factor.

“Viking, for example, stunned me with its rich historical content, amazing visuals and its in-depth discussion about humanity,” Li noted.

Despite its poor box-office performance, historical space drama Salyut

7, for instance, holds a rating of 7.7/10 on Chinese review platform Douban and has been rated “better than 86 percent of action films” by more than 20,000 users on the platform.

A sporting chance

Over the past two years, an increasing amount of non-Hollywood films from countries beyond the US have been imported into the mainland – among which some, like Indian film Dangal and Spanish crime film The

Invisible Guest, have had tremendous box-office success. As we move into the future, it is possible that Russian titles may also benefit from this trend.

With the 2017 box-office success of Indian wrestler film Dangal in China paving the way, Ice, which set records when released in Russia in February, stands a bigger chance to outperform its predecessors, Chinese critics said.

“Sports genre movies have great market potential in the Chinese mainland as the number of sports movies that had been screened in the cinemas is small,” Chinese film critic Lin Chudong told the Global Times.

Ice currently holds a 8.4/10 Douban rating and 33,000 “want-to-see” votes on Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan, which puts it behind the 90,000 votes for Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player

One, which is set to debut on the same day. Ice has also received a stunning 9.5/10 rating on Maoyan after prescreenings were held in dozens of cities across China starting on Sunday.

With the future of sports films in China is looking up, cooperation between the China and Russia in this area may also become official.

Ice’s producer Fyodor Bondarchuk, also the chairman of the Council for Culture at the Russian-Chinese Committee of Friendship, Peace and Development, also expressed during a meeting with Zhang in early March that he hopes to cooperate with China on sports films as the country prepares for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, according to a report on the Chinese media watchdog’s website.