China's screens began with a Peking opera reel in 1905 Beijing
Louis Lumière's cameraman reached Shanghai a year after inventing cinematography; a variety bill there showed movies on 11 August 1896. China's own first film, Dingjun Mountain, arrived in November 1905. By 2012 the mainland was already the world's second-largest box office, trailing only the United States.
Mainland Chinese cinema sits beside Hong Kong and Taiwan as one of three Chinese-language film histories. Early production clustered in treaty-port Shanghai under mostly foreign companies until domestic hits such as Yan Ruisheng (1921) and Zhang Shichuan's Mingxing studio pulled capital in. After the May Thirtieth Movement, costume dramas and wuxia such as Romance of the Western Chamber pushed a "revive national cinema" turn. The 1930s split politically: a Left-Wing Film Movement favored didactic realism (The Goddess, Song of the Fishermen), while Liu Na-ou's "soft film" camp prized camera and montage.
Late-century state culture invented "main melody" pictures—Hollywood-flavored vehicles built around patriotic "red songs," often subsidized with one to two million RMB a year and free military access. August First Film Studio and epics such as Decisive Engagement (1991), The Opium War (1997), and The Founding of a Republic (2009) exemplify the genre. Against that grain, Fifth Generation work like Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993) shared the Cannes Palme d'Or yet faced mainland censorship over sexuality and the Cultural Revolution.
After 1989, Sixth Generation directors shot cheap 16 mm and digital portraits of urban margins—Wang Xiaoshuai's The Days for about ten thousand U.S. dollars, Jia Zhangke's pickpocket tale Xiao Wu, Zhang Yuan's Beijing Bastards. Jia's Still Life later took Venice's Golden Lion in 2006. China now hosts vast complexes such as Oriental Movie Metropolis and Hengdian World Studios; 2016 box office reached CN¥45.71 billion (about US$6.58 billion), making the country a Hollywood co-production hub as much as a national industry.
Source: Cinema of China
