Ni Zhen (translated by Chris Berry),
Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China’s Fifth Generation.
Durham & London: Duke University, 2002.
ISBN: 0 822 32970 0
240pp
US$18.95 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Duke University)

Ni Zhen’s original Chinese version of Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy is a classic work of late twentieth century Chinese cinema studies. Professor Ni was – and still is – an intimate of the Fifth Generation filmmakers who took the film world by storm in the mid-1980s. Ni was their teacher, critic and, at times, award-winning scriptwriter. Few scholars are better placed to describe “the genesis of China’s Fifth generation”, which he says is “like a legend”. This English translation of Ni’s Memoirs is therefore a rich and much needed addition to the English-language field which, until now, has lacked a monograph on the Fifth Generation. One of its most famous exponents, Chen Kaige, writes on the back cover:

Ni Zhen was himself one of the educators of the Fifth Generation, so he has been able to give a full and accurate account of what happened then on the basis of his own first-hand evidence. Reading his book not only gave me intellectual pleasure, but also took me back to those unforgettable times.

Ni Zhen tells personal, collective and institutional stories of the Fifth Generation within the Beijing Film Academy. His chosen genre is “memoirs”, supported by extensive interviews. This genre sets the style and tone: historical, lively and factual. He recalls “wonderful and happy times” such as the story of Zhang Yimou’s first camera, partly bought by selling his blood, and later acceptance into the Film Academy despite his ineligibility – he was two years over the age limit! He delves into “bitter and unbelievable” incidents especially from the Cultural Revolution when, for example, a fourteen-year old Chen Kaige rejected and shoved his father during a Red Guard criticism session. Chen has never forgotten this incident or forgiven himself. He also writes himself into the bitter-sweet story. The preface to the English edition expresses deep gratitude to his wife, a fellow teacher at the Academy, who died of cancer as Ni was completing the Chinese edition. The book is therefore a celebration of the triumph of the Fifth Generation and a dedication to life and death, triumph and disappointment, in post-Mao film circles.

Professor Ni’s Memoirs focus on the origins of the Fifth Generation and their maiden works. He describes the Fifth Generation as a term synonymous with 1980s Chinese cinema and, more variously, as a film school, movement or phenomena that “made Chinese spectators gasp with astonishment”. His reminiscences are circular, opening with a reunion in 1993 and then turning to the re-opening of the Beijing Film Academy in Zhuxin village in 1978 after its closure during the Cultural Revolution. The first chapter on student admissions recounts the background and enrolment of the main filmmakers: Tian Zhuangzhuang, Chen Kaige, Bai Hong, Jiang Haiyang, Xie Xiaojing, Li Shaohong, Xia Gang, Wu Ziniu, Zhang Junzhao, Liu Miaomiao, Hou Yong, Gu Changwei and Zhang Yimou. The second and third chapters, called “Noses to the grindstone” and “First steps”, document the hard work, seriousness and fun times that made up the “treasured space” of student life at the Academy and describe selected pre-graduation works. The third chapter on “Graduation” analyses the origins of China’s new cinema, with particular emphasis on collaborations that gave rise to One and Eight and Yellow Earth in 1983 and 1984, respectively. He writes that “the birth of Yellow Earth made it clear that a new page had been turned in the history of Chinese cinema”.

These chapters, written a decade later in 1994, place the birth of Chinese New Cinema into personal, historical and political perspective from within China. They are, Ni writes, “a pre-history”. But Memoirs also accomplishes a second task, exemplified in the final “Postscipt”, written for this English translation two decades later. Professor Ni places Fifth Generation into an international perspective. He offers a periodization of the Fifth Generation – beginning with collaboration among filmmakers and ending with dispersal as they each develop their own styles. He also comments on scholarship in the field, critiquing postcolonial approaches and endorsing Fifth Generation as a national expression of “forgotten and repressed hidden history”. This chapter is a very valuable contribution to China film scholarship, even though Ni concludes that Fifth Generation cinema is marginal both to mainstream Chinese culture, which has never endorsed its extraordinary contribution to Chinese film, and to the “Eurocentric” international film world. Not everyone would agree. Zhang Yimou, for example, has just released Hero (Hong Kong/China, 2002), an epic, martial arts blockbuster, and is now beginning his second martial arts extravaganza. And Tian Zhuangzhuang recently re-made Fei Mu’s famous 1948 work, Spring in a Small Town (China/Hong Kong/France, 2002), to great acclaim.

Ni Zhen’s unique memoirs are matched by a masterly translation. The translator, Chris Berry, is an outstanding Western scholar of the Chinese cinema. He is also a prize-winning translator from Chinese to English. These skills ensure that his translation of Ni Zhen’s work communicates the readability, accessibility, accuracy and scholarship of the original, which he says is both “a good read and a contribution to knowledge and debate”. It certainly is! Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy is mandatory reading for Chinese film scholars and students in the West and recommended reading for anyone interested in the field.

Zhang Yimou’s words are an apt conclusion: “this is not just a book about film, but also a book about human life…Thank you, Professor Ni Zhen”.

Mary Farquhar
Griffith University, Australia.

Created on: Tuesday, 4 May 2004 | Last Updated: 4-May-04