The Films Of The Sixth Generation: A Postmodern Analysis

"The sixth-generation" of Chinese cinema has caused quite a lot of controversies ever since its birth. The issue of how to define "the sixth generation" is still unsettled. Unlike the fifth-generation, the sixth-generation do not share the same viewpoint on esthetics and arts, but they all focus on ordinary people, especially those who live at the bottom of society. In the 1990s they replaced the fifth-generation of Chinese cinema and became the rising group in Chinese film production. This thesis is intended to approach the filmic texts of the sixth-generation from the postmodern within a broad social and cultural context of globalization and postcolonialism. Through the filmic text analysis of The Suzhou River the thesis will focus on the postmodernity of the sixth-generation in general, and then demonstrate Chinese social and cultural structure of 1990s in an attempt to point out the possible future trend of Chinese cinema.