Exotic influence

Over nearly 130 years since the birth of projected moving pictures, there have been many beautiful moments like this — where directors, amid the vastness of foreign cultures, serendipitously encounter their own muses and create timeless classics that will last a lifetime.

For instances, Quentin Tarantino's love for Chinese martial arts movies led to the creation of the Kill Bill franchise while Bernardo Bertolucci's interest in the Forbidden City gave cinephiles the masterpiece The Last Emperor.

Qiao Sixue, a young filmmaker known for her directorial debut The Cord of Life, traveled to France in 2013 to learn about cinema. During her time there, she watched many European classics by masters such as Bertolucci and Roman Polanski, finding that the overseas experience broadened her views on the meaning of life and the value of the world.

"In France, you'll find that regularly visiting cinemas, museums and art galleries is a part of everyday life. Growing up as a young person in a small town in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, I was enthralled by the masterpieces displayed at French art spots that I had previously only seen online or in books," she says.

Zhang Yiwu, a professor of Chinese studies at Peking University, says that absorbing influences from various civilizations has been a longstanding phenomenon in Chinese cinema, starting with the early impact of the former Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the popularity of Japanese movies in the late 1970s, before Western films from the United States and Europe exerted greater influence from the late 1980s.

As the Chinese film industry continued to experience rapid growth in its domestic market for a decade prior to the pandemic and has since solidified its position as the world's second-largest film business, more and more Chinese movies are screening at international film festivals, winning attention and recognition overseas, he adds.

Between last year and early this year, the China Film Archive, the largest of its kind in the country, organized festivals specifically for screening Chinese movies in 17 countries and regions, including Egypt, Chile, Colombia and India. From its launch in 2011 to its 13th edition this year, the Beijing International Film Festival has offered in excess of 10,000 screenings of more than 4,000 movies by both Chinese and foreign filmmakers.