i started a draught of my essay today

Question One

The film industry of China is one of the vastest in the world. Despite this, a lot of the films they make receive little acclaim or success outside of China. My aim at the beginning of this research task was to study why some directors receive both critical, and financial success in the west, focusing on the work of Zhang Yimou, the director of such films as House of Flying Daggers, Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower. I chose this topic because I already had a fondness for Asian cinema, and specifically Zhang Yimou so I was enthusiastic to learn more about his views on his films and their success and also explore the views of different theorists of Chinese cinema. I thought it would be a good idea to keep a record of the research I did in order to get support from my teachers, and easily correlate it at the end of the project. I used www.Blogger.com and my address was http://latymermediacriticalresearch09nathan.blogspot.com.

I started my research with primary research. I decided to watch all the films that I wanted to focus on (House of flying daggers, Hero, Riding alone for thousands of miles and Curse of the Golden Flower) in order to refresh my memory of the ones I had already seen and have a primary viewing of the ones I hadn’t. By doing this I felt that I could start to form my own opinions of why the films had received relatively high success levels, and therefore give my self a starting point for my research and a line to take in my answer to the question.

After watching these films I decided to start on my secondary sources of research. I read extracts from several books including Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema by Gary G. Xu, Chinese National Cinema (National Cinemas Series.) by Yingjin Zhang and Out of Asia: The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, Abbas Kiraostami, and Zhang Yimou; Essays and Interviews by Bert Cardullo. These books were interesting, especially Out of Asia, as it contained an interview with Zhang Yimou in which he spoke in some detail about why he felt his films had been successful in the west. One problem I had, however, is that I had bought the books from www.Amazon.co.uk, which is a useful site as it provides a list of recommended books, however it is hard to gauge how much relevant information each book will have. Because of this I found some books held little relevant information. It was at times also tedious to read long bodies of texts that in many ways overlapped in content. I would probably have been better off buying fewer books and reading each in more detail. I also took a visit to the British Film Institute Library which had several magazine articles and periodicals about the work of Zhang Yimou.

I then decided to do some primary research.