The Curse of the Golden Flower and the Two Trends in Chinese Cinema

Gavlanised by the release of Zhang Yimou's The Curse of the Golden Flower, Mike Walsh looks at a schism in Chinese cinema. He writes that this schism is born of two contradictory approaches – the first attempts to find textual forms that will serve as models for the economic consolidation of the cinema, while the second views cinema as a mode of dissent for those who see themselves marginalised by the political system.