Generating History: Rethinking Generations in Chinese Filmmaking

Abstract This paper argues that the idea of a Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers was created almost as much by critics and others outside of China as by China-based writers on film. I will suggest that this cohort of filmmakers, which emerged in the mid-1980s, was more distinctive and shared more in common than generations of filmmakers before or since that decade. But using the Fifth Generation label can sometimes obscure real differences among the artists to whom the term is applied. Moreover, this cohort, within a matter of a few years, lost its relative coherence as its members went their separate ways. The paper will end by suggesting that in some senses the Fifth Generation, usually hailed as a “New Wave” in Chinese filmmaking, marked an end of certain attitudes to film in China rather than a new beginning.