By Garry Maddox
Pauline Chan has some wise words for anyone struggling to make it in the film business: 走向中国夢. Translation: follow the China dream.
In a move that shows how much the film world is changing, the resourceful Australian writer-director is breaking ground with a film she is shooting in Australia soon. Instead of aiming it at Australian or even American audiences, she is making the romantic comedy My Extraordinary Wedding in Mandarin for the Chinese market.
Breaking ground: Pauline Chan plans to make a movie for Chinese audiences in Australia.Credit: Steven Siewert
The producer of The Dragon Pearl and director of 33 Postcards – two Chinese-Australian co-productions from 2011 – is taking a radically different approach that is more like manufacturing a car than making a film. "I see it as an Australian export film," she says. "We're venturing into the Chinese market with Australian creatives, Australian landscape, Australian technicians – 80 to 90 per cent shot and managed and crewed by Australians – with Chinese investment the major force behind the film."
My Extraordinary Wedding – the working title – will star both Chinese and Chinese-Australian actors in a story about a marriage between a couple from the two countries that goes comically wrong. When Australian audiences watch it, it will be subtitled. "The theme is the pressure on young people in China from their family and society to settle down, get married and have a child," Chan says. Because of the one-child policy, there are so many doting adults for every child that there has been a campaign calling on parents and grandparents to "leave the kids alone" so they can lead their own lives.
Zhu Lin and Guy Pearce in 33 Postcards, which was produced by Pauline Chan.
It won't be a low-budget film either. With a Chinese producing partner, Chan says the film will cost $5 million to $8 million depending on casting. It will be set up as a co-production, which means it can skirt the Chinese quota of 34 imported films a year, including Hollywood productions. "For smaller independent filmmakers, the only way to get into the China market is by co-producing," Chan says. "I've been there doing business for the last 14 years. It's really about knowing the system in terms of how to put a project together and knowing the Chinese audience tastes – and that means investors' tastes as well."
My Extraordinary Wedding follows a handful of Australian films in English that are aimed at Chinese audiences, including Kimble Rendall's shark horror pic Bait and coming action-adventure film Nest, and a small number of Chinese-backed productions that have used Australia as a filming location, including Jackie Chan's Bleeding Steel and the American sequel Pacific Rim: Maelstrom, which is shooting in Sydney for the Chinese-owned Legendary Pictures.
Chan believes it is important to understand what types of films Chinese authorities encourage – and discourage – for cultural reasons. Official censorship guidelines prohibit movies that "promote cults or superstition", for example, which means zombie and vampire films won't get a release.
Chan will shoot My Extraordinary Wedding in Western Australia – "all over the west coast" with Screen West's support – early in the new year. She sees great opportunity in the rapid expansion of the Chinese market, which has seen it grow by an incredible average of 27 new cinemas a day this year – overtaking North America when it reached an estimated 40,000 cinemas last month.
Pauline Chan. Illustration: John Shakespeare.
Even if has slowed in the second half of this year, the country's box office grew by 49 per cent to $US6.8 billion last year – second only to North America's $US11 billion. It is expected to become the No.1 market within a few years.
Chan, who spoke at an Australia China Co-production Forum run by the Australian Screen Association and Motion Picture Association recently, believes there will be more films shot in Mandarin after hers. "There's more and more Chinese interest in shooting in Australia thanks to the government's competitive tax incentives and different state agencies are also very well positioned to receive delegations from China and Asia and make visiting producers feel welcome and safe," she says. "That security – the sense of it – is very important for anyone making films in a foreign land."
She expects My Extraordinary Wedding to open in 4000 to 6000 cinemas in China with more than financial benefits if it becomes a hit. "It is putting Australian culture, landscape and talent on the Chinese stage." she says.
And in more news from Australian film ...
Pacquola wants to go even darker now
Actress Celia Pacquola after winning an AACTA Award. Monday 5th December 2016 SMH photo Louie Douvis .Credit: Louie Douvis
After Celia Pacquola's popular win at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards for her dramatic role in The Beautiful Lie this week, the comic is keen to push herself further as an actress. Not content with playing a mother of three who is cheated on by her husband in the ABC mini-series, the Utopia and Rosehaven star wants to play a villain. "I think it would really go against everything in my being that works towards trying to get people to like me," she tells Short Cuts. "I think it would be really hard for me to play an unlikeable character."
Red Dog and Killing Ground bound for Sundance
Phoenix from Red Dog: True Blue travels from Perth to Karratha for the world premiere.
Two Australian films will get a key launch pad for international release after selection for the Sundance Film Festival next month. Kriv Stenders' prequel Red Dog: True Blue, which opens here on Boxing Day, will screen in the Sundance kids selection, which has thrilled producer Nelson Woss. "That's amazing for a film like this because we're not an edgy, tough Sundance film," he tells Short Cuts. "But they just loved the story and thought it was such a throwback to those old family films that they've given it a special slot." And Damien Power's survival thriller Killing Ground will screen in the Midnight sidebar, the festival section that has launched the likes of The Babadook, The Blair Witch Project and Saw over the years. "It's hugely exciting to have our international premiere where so many of my favourite filmmakers got their starts," Power says. Killing Ground, which had its world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year, will get a cinema release next year. Also selected for Sundance is Luci Schroder's short film Slapper, about a rebellious teen hustling money for the morning-after pill.
Twitter @gmaddox