Oliver Stone's Challenge to the Chinese Film-Making Industry

[Randy W]

'You've got to make a movie about Mao': Oliver Stone calls out Chinese films' failure to face history

 

 

“You’ve got to make a movie about Mao. You’ve got to make a movie about the Cultural Revolution. When you do that, you open up, you stir the waters and allow true creativity to emerge in this country. And then, that will the basis of real co-productions. Open up your past, the way the United States has opened up its past".

 

The director said that he'd tried three different times to make movies in China but on all occasions had "run up against a wall". He also cited his attempts to make a movie about Mao back in the early 1990s. “You talk about co-productions, but you really don’t want to face the history of China. I tried to make a movie about Mao Zedong. But I was told ‘you will never make a movie about the Cultural Revolution’".

 

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“I couldn’t get distribution. All these companies are scared … that the [Chinese] government would pull their films, if they got upset,” he said.

“It’s a beautiful country,” he added, “but my god, the repression.”