While newspapers are full of reports about the frenzied preparations to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China today, small cities far away from the capital are untouched, with only the big parks decked up for the eight-day holiday.
But the people are hoping to spend a large part of the holiday seeing the three new movies released specially for the occasion. All three are big on the early days of the Revolution, just before Liberation in 1949. To promote them, the government had started issuing ‘coupons’ to movie-goers in September. Each coupon will enable them to watch these movies for just 10 yuan, compared to the usual price of over 35 yuan. What is interesting is the film industry’s contribution to the occasion. The biggest movie of the three, The Founding of a Republic, has top Chinese stars acting for free, sometimes in cameos. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau — they are all there. One curtain-raiser estimated that viewers will get to see a star every three minutes in the film.
The film depicts the struggle in China between Mao Zedong’s communist party and the Kuomintang that took place after the Japanese were ousted in 1945. The blockbuster was released two weeks back, and is set to break all records in box-office history here. But its success has overshadowed the second film, Tiananmen, planned for the 60th anniversary. Directed by Ye Daying, considered a rebel and ‘red’ movie-maker, the film deals with a much smaller canvas. It revolves around a team of stage art workers given the task of refurbishing Tiananmen Square a month before the founding ceremony of the Republic — on October 1, 1949. In his blog, Ye writes, under the title, “Chairman Mao is being Isolated”: “We went through so much trouble producing Chairman Mao (digitally), and it really makes the heart go cold when no one is seeing it in the theatres. I lament about the changing world!”
Locked out
What pains him is the negligent way in which the film is being shown, with theatres showing it and then taking it off without any fanfare. Both The Founding of a Republic and Tiananmen are produced by Han Sanping, the CEO of the influential China Film Group, which imports foreign movies and invests in all big films. But the difference is that Han is also the director of the blockbuster.
In an interview, Ye makes an interesting comparison between his film and its star-studded rival. “From the commercial point of view, we only have one star, which is Chairman Mao. Add all the characters in The Founding of a Republic together, can they be bigger than Chairman Mao?”
Chairman Mao seems to be the flavour of the season. A government-run online survey conducted across the country to find the most popular patriotic song had The East is Red emerging as the winner. This song, written by a peasant, was played across China on loudspeakers during the Cultural Revolution. It compares the communist party to the sun, and hails its head, Chairman Mao, as the people’s “great saviour”. But after he died, and Deng Xiaoping came to power, it lost favour.
Shaoshan village in Hunan, where Mao was born, has seen a rise in tourists ever since the recession. Old-timers still pray at his huge statue there. The China Daily reported one villager making an offering of two 555 cigarettes to Mao’s statue and praying: “Great Leader, bless my son Pengpeng so that he might get a good job.” Today, Mao’s portrait on Tiananmen Square will watch the greatest military parade ever held in Beijing — with nuclear missiles on display. Ironically, the people have been locked out of the spectacle.
