WESTERN models dressed as ancient Chinese warriors lined the paths of La Napoule, a modern version of the 500-year-old castle, which provided the backdrop for an event to promote the latest work by Chinese director Chen Kaige at the Cannes Movie Festival on May 12.

Journalists and important figures from the international movie industry were invited to watch 11 minutes of the movie "The Promise" (Wuji).

Such extravagant arrangement made it more than obvious that "The Promise" went to Cannes not for the Golden Palme but for the international market.

"The Promise" has assembled a super cast from Asia - Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, South Korea and Japan. Chen himself appeared recently for the public release of a video game based on the movie.

Later this year, "The Promise" will compete in the domestic market with Zhang Yimou's new work "Qian Li Zou Dan Qi", the title of which translates roughly to "The Lonely Rider".

Like Chen's reluctance to disclose much about the movie before its official release, Zhang makes the storyline and shooting process secret to avoid piracy. Both movies boast huge production costs of hundreds of million yuan.

Zhang's two latest works, "Hero" and "The House of Flying Daggers" both had large budgets and box office returns. "Hero" collected nearly 250 million yuan (US$30 million) from the domestic market, and "The House of Flying Daggers" around 160 million yuan (US$19 million).

Such deep involvement in commercial operations by China's top movie directors stand in sharp contrast to their first emergence on the international movie scene, when movies were made at low cost, with no commercial promotion before or after production. They relied on awards to attract audiences to see their movies, both at home and abroad.

International recognition

Contemporary Chinese movies started to make their mark in the world movie scene in the late 1980s, when Zhang Yimou's "Red Sorghum" won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival.

In the years that followed, Zhang and his colleagues, known as the fifth generation of Chinese movie makers, produced many renowned works, such as "Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lanterns" by Zhang, "Farewell My Concubine" by Chen, and "In the Heat of the Sun" by Jiang Wen, winning many international awards.

Most of these movies are set in rural China or glorify traditional Chinese art. As Chinese movies were honoured internationally, the domestic movie market shrank drastically.

Zhang met with serious criticism at home, where people said he deliberately presented the ugly and backward side of China to please Western audiences.

All movies are supposed to go through the inspection of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) before they are shot in China. Zhang took his movie "To Live" to the Cannes Movie Festival without permission from the SARFT. As a punishment, the movie was never released in China, though it won two awards at Cannes.

Other movies suffered similar fates, like "East Palace, West Palace" by Zhang Yuan, "Beijing Bicycle" by Wang Xiaoshuai, and "Devils at the Gate" by Jiang Wen.

Some of these movies were banned because of their sensitive subjects like homosexuality in "Palace", and some didn't receive proper permission from the SARFT before being made.

Official status

New directors known as the sixth generation are emerging and winning acclaim in the West. Some cultivate domestic fans through the piracy market.

Many fifth and sixth generation directors learned how to obtain government support or at least permission for their later works so they could benefit from the domestic box office.

By making compromises to gain official status, some directors have lost their avant-garde sharpness in their later works. Zhang Yimou, for example, never won any other important international awards after "To Live".

He turned to large commercial productions with the movie "Hero". This was a major success on one hand, raking in the largest box office income of any Chinese movie, while on the other, harsh criticism of the storyline and the whole ideology of the movie - apparently accepting of tyranny - was overwhelming. This phenomenon of "box office success coming with public criticism" also followed Zhang's next work "The House of Flying Daggers".

Among the directors who hold to their marginal status in movie making - hiring unknown actors and sticking to small cost productions - are Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke. Both released their latest works recently. Wang's "Shanghai Dreams" (Qing Hong) won the Jury Prize at the 58th Cannes Movie Festival. But audiences seem to be turning a cold shoulder to these movies. None of them has made the top 10 box office of the year so far.