Patriotic movies turn out big hits
PATRIOTIC films dominated Chinese theaters during the National Day holiday and generated a record 5 billion yuan (US$708 million) of box office revenue.
China saw a total of 135 million moviegoers from September 30 to Monday, with three key movies — “My People, My Country,” “The Captain” and “The Climbers” — raking in 2.22 billion yuan, 1.98 billion yuan and 823 million yuan, respectively, figures from the China Movie Data Information Network showed yesterday.
The patriotic films’ box office success indicates audiences’ recognition of the filmmakers’ innovative and enterprising spirit in artistic creation. Also, the national feeling displayed in the movies echoes the rising patriotic passion among the Chinese people, said Sun Xianghui, director of the China Film Art Research Center.
The seven-part epic anthology by seven directors led by Chen Kaige, “My People, My Country,” has become the top-grossing film in terms of audience satisfaction among all the domestic films ever surveyed, according to the China Film Archive.
The film recalls seven important historical moments in China over the past seven decades, ranging from the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s successful test of its first atomic bomb, the return of Hong Kong to the motherland in 1997 and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to the Shenzhou 11 manned mission crew members’ safe return to Earth in 2016.
The film earned a record 91 points out of a total of 100 in the latest China film audience satisfaction survey covering the three Chinese films that premiered around October 1, the National Day.
It ranked the first in terms of audience satisfaction among all the 267 domestic films covered since the survey was launched in early 2015, the archive showed.
Co-conducted by the China Film Art Research Center, the China film audience satisfaction survey is a film evaluation system independent of the China film box office.
The survey adopts methods of on-site sampling surveys at theaters, online surveys of film industry workers and experts and big data analysis to comprehensively evaluate domestic films from the perspectives of screen depiction, ideological content and film popularity.
“The Captain,” a portrayal of the miraculous emergency landing of Sichuan Airlines flight 3U8633 in May 2018, took sixth place on the audience satisfaction chart covering all the domestic films ever surveyed.
“The Climbers,” which dramatizes Chinese mountaineers summiting Mount Qomolangma — Mount Everest —in 1960 and 1975, came 12th.
(Xinhua)