Hidden Dragon

[Randy W]

Hidden Dragon: The Man Who Helped Chinese Film Go Global
Italian film industry veteran Marco Mueller has played a pivotal role in bringing Chinese cinema to a global audience over the past 50 years.

from the Sixth Tone

Marco Mueller poses for a photo with director Li Shaohong (back left) and actress Gong Li (right). Mathew Scott for Sixth Tone

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Things have changed a lot since the 68-year-old first traveled to China in 1975. At the time, the country’s film industry was practically unknown outside its borders, despite Chinese-language movies having been around since the late 19th century.

The fact this is no longer the case owes much to Mueller himself. Early on in his China journey, fate and good fortune led the Italian to meet the filmmakers who would later become known as China’s “fifth generation” — including Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang. He would then go on to play a pivotal role in introducing their movies to the world.

Mueller was among the first Italian scholars invited to study in China once the two nations had restored diplomatic relations in the early ’70s. He arrived to find a country still mired in the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic period of radical political campaigns.

Though an anthropologist by training, his new university in Beijing told him the subject was “bourgeois” and that he’d be studying “mass literature” instead. Soon, the Italian was attending regular Chinese film screenings with his classmates — and the young student was hooked. He remembers being blown away by Xie Jin’s 1977 hit movie “Youth” in particular.

The experience ignited a lifelong love for Chinese cinema. As Mueller established his career in the film industry back home, he began to champion the cause of Chinese filmmakers.

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Now, he has moved back to China full time to take up his latest position as an instructor at the Shanghai Film Academy.