A Study On Zhang Yimou And Jia Zhangke’s Film Creations In The Perspective Of Regional Culture

One of the many concepts of Regional Culture believes that the regional spiritualculture decides and explains the manners and motives of all creative activities. Thewell-known French scholar H.A.Taine says when analyzing the emergence of art,“theproduct of spiritual culture, just like that of animals and plants, can only be explained bytheir respective surroundings”. As representatives of the fifth and the new generation ofChinese film directors, both Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke have some series of workswhich show distinct regional characteristics. Most of the studies on Zhang Yimou havetheir focus on things such as folk cultures, narrative techniques, visual language, andfeminism. The studies on Jia Zhangke concern mostly about the theme of the underclassand the documentary and plain style, pondering over the living state of certain group ofpeople during the great changes of the present times. The studies taking them asexamples or making comparisons between the two concentrate on the view of estheticsand narration. There are similarities and differences between the two directors’ works.However the distinct regional characteristics shared jointly by the two directors shouldnot be neglected. There is hardly any study which has adopted the angle of regionalculture and the theory of humanism to do both paralleled and contrasting research ontheir films.The first part of the paper introduces the research background, literature review athome and abroad, purpose, value, content and method of the project. The secondchapter defines the concept of Regional Culture, sketches its history, and describes itsdevelopment in China and the characteristics in Chinese films. The third chapter introduces Qin Culture and Jin Culture, from which Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangkecame from, analyzes the potential influences they had on the two directors, and pointsout the changes in the themes and styles of the two directors’ films in the globalization.The fourth chapter analyzes the cultural connotations of Zhang Yimou’s folkloreceremonies and locality of Jia Zhangke’s works from the perspective of humanism, andcompares the similarities and differences of their creating purposes and manners. Thefifth chapter explores more effective ways to protect and develop regional culturethrough the art of film by analyzing the status quo Chinese regional culture underglobalization, and puts forward some new ideas for the film directors in the originalcreation of films with regional cultural characteristics. The last part concludes the wholeproject and comes up with several ideas acquired during the study.This paper systematically studies Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke’s film works fromthe angle of regional culture, from which seeking a reasonable explanation for thedirectors’ personal motives on the one hand, and the regional characteristics of theirworks on the other, so as to provide a new perspective for the future study on ZhangYimou and Jia Zhangke, encourages more follow-up researches in this field andcontributes to the protection and development of Chinese culture by means of Chinesefilm art in the future.