Persist Or Compromise

The sixth generation directors were born and brought up in early 1990 s. In their first 10 years they had been committing to explore fringe and independent image. Postmodern narrative can be found everywhere in their films. In a word it is reflected in two aspects, "aesthetics of ugliness" and "documentary aesthetics". But by the arrival of new millennium, this batch of director unanimously returned or transformed to mainstream. There are three remarkable characteristic features of their transformation path.First is they change their subject ranger from the "fringe" to "mainstream", second is change their director’s identity from hiding "underground" to emerging "above the ground", the third is their creation attitude show a tendency from "art" to "commercial". At the same time, which means behind this significant transformation, is the historical and practical reasons caused both by the system and the sixth generation itself.Meanwhile, by now more than ten years has passed from the beginning of the sixth generation’s transformation, in a time of commercial film quite prevailing, the sixth generation’s cultural value mainly reflected in two aspects: first is slightly correct the social ethics which is already missing in Chinese film, second is provide a reference on how to choose and return the culture value of Chinese film.With four chapters in this paper’s main body conducted the phenomenon analysis and reason discussion in sequence on the sixth generation’s image style, transformation characteristics, background and significance.In this paper, based on the analysis of style transformation background and reasons of the "sixth generation" directors, combined with domestic film industry’s present status, the author mainly use the method of comparative study, case analysis, literature study and observation to discuss the cultural value and influence of the "sixth generation" directors.