Chinese Cinema

Chinese-language cinema spans several distinct traditions. Mainland production was reshaped by the "Fifth Generation" directors of the 1980s, whose visually saturated historical films brought Chinese cinema to international festivals.

Hong Kong developed an entirely separate industry, whose martial arts and heroic-bloodshed films influenced action filmmaking worldwide and exported both its stars and its choreographers. Taiwanese cinema produced a contemplative, slow-paced New Wave that remains a reference point for art film.

The mainland market is now among the largest in the world by box office, with a domestic industry producing at enormous scale, a shift that has changed which films get made globally, not only within China.