"But I think we need the international market"
About this Quote
A single bland sentence, and yet it carries the quiet force of an industry memo: art is no longer just made for a nation, it is made to clear customs. When Zhang Yimou says, "But I think we need the international market", the key word is need. Not want, not welcome, not engage. Need. It frames global audiences less as a creative horizon than as infrastructure: financing, distribution, prestige, survival.
Coming from Zhang, the line lands with extra voltage because his career is a case study in China’s cultural pivot. He emerged as a Fifth Generation auteur with films that traveled the festival circuit as a kind of unofficial cultural diplomacy, exporting a certain "China" that the West could recognize: history, spectacle, suffering, beauty. Later, he became the architect of mass choreography for the Beijing Olympics, a director fluent in state-scale imagery and global broadcast logic. The subtext is that these aren’t separate worlds. The international market is where capital, legitimacy, and narrative influence consolidate.
The "but" suggests he’s answering an objection: that international taste dilutes local specificity, that courting global buyers risks flattening stories into export-friendly aesthetics. Zhang’s rebuttal is pragmatic, almost weary. In an era where domestic censorship can narrow themes and domestic box office can be volatile, the global marketplace becomes both pressure valve and amplifier. It’s also a confession: the modern filmmaker isn’t just an artist; he’s a negotiator between politics, patrons, and planetary attention.
Coming from Zhang, the line lands with extra voltage because his career is a case study in China’s cultural pivot. He emerged as a Fifth Generation auteur with films that traveled the festival circuit as a kind of unofficial cultural diplomacy, exporting a certain "China" that the West could recognize: history, spectacle, suffering, beauty. Later, he became the architect of mass choreography for the Beijing Olympics, a director fluent in state-scale imagery and global broadcast logic. The subtext is that these aren’t separate worlds. The international market is where capital, legitimacy, and narrative influence consolidate.
The "but" suggests he’s answering an objection: that international taste dilutes local specificity, that courting global buyers risks flattening stories into export-friendly aesthetics. Zhang’s rebuttal is pragmatic, almost weary. In an era where domestic censorship can narrow themes and domestic box office can be volatile, the global marketplace becomes both pressure valve and amplifier. It’s also a confession: the modern filmmaker isn’t just an artist; he’s a negotiator between politics, patrons, and planetary attention.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marketing |
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