They used to make a spectacular scene. About once a month, peasants from all nearby villages would flock to a mobile cinema for a black-and-white film. The early birds would sit comfortably on a stool or a brick, latecomers would have to stand on their tiptoes or climb up a tree.

Today, however, the slack film market, particularly in China's vast countryside, threatens to put a damper on the country's centennial film industry glitzy with big-budget blockbusters.

As the seaside resort of Sanya in the southernmost island province of Hainan makes last minute preparations for the 14th Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, Chinese filmmakers have to face up to the fact that many farmers in China's least developed regions have no access at all to movies. "Film" hardly exists in the lexicon of many rural children, whose fuzzy understanding of the word is based on distant memories of their parents and grandparents.

In better-off rural regions, townships and counties for instance, repetitions of the same antiquated films draws few audiences, but the blockbusters popular among urbanites are often far beyond the affordability and comprehension of rural dwellers.

Even in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, fewer people go to the cinema nowadays because they can buy cheap VCDs or DVDs, or download films from the Internet. Cinemas often charge 50 yuan (US$6) or 100 yuan (US$12) at theaters.

A recent survey shows that an average Chinese goes to the cinema once every five years. "It's a matter of life and death for the film industry," many critics say.

Past glory

Li Yunshan, a veteran cinema worker in Fenyang of north China's Shanxi Province, still recalls with excitement how the villagers revered him in the 1970s.

"The news of a film would send everyone screaming with laughter. If a village had 1,000 people, more than 800 were sure to come," said Li, now a self-employed film projector. "Days before the film was due, the anxious audience would come to me with pleas."

The former film projector used to travel from village to village and was treated with the best possible food wherever he went.

Huang Xuze said he could never forget 1982's Shaolin Temple because it caused such a tumult in the mountain village of his hometown in the northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

"Each family was bickering over who should stay home -- we didn't use to lock our houses back then," he said. "Young girls who were told to stay cried their eyes out. The village auditorium was already overcrowded with people, but still, the ticket collectors couldn't stop the long queues from pushing in."

Films were more than a means of entertainment to peasants who relied on the movement of the sun, rather than a clock, to decide when to get up or go to bed. "It was an important social occasion for villagers to gossip, for young girls to date their beaus and for kids to stay up late," said Wang Jinmei, a villager from Ya'ergou village in Yanchi county of Ningxia. "Everyone would feel stronger and more energetic the next morning."

Ever since three reels of silent film were shot in a courtyard of a Beijing photography shop of a Peking opera star doing Dingjun Mountain in 1905, Chinese cinema has gone through successive peaks and troughs.

It reached a climax in 1977, right after the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976), when movie attendance across the country reached a record 29.3 billion.

Chinese film has been on a downward spiral ever since. In 2004, a year touted by media pundits as a "bright spot," attendance was 200 million, a mere 0.6 percent of the 1977 level.

Audience neglected

The forthcoming 14th Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival slated for Nov. 9-12 is said to feature "noble, elegant and sublime" styles of art and culture, with attendance of several hundred movie stars from home and abroad and 21 foreign classic films to be shown.

The festival, which presents Golden Rooster Awards and the Hundred Flowers Awards in alternate years to outstanding films and artists in China, is the most prestigious and influential film event in China.

But in reflection of the social disparity in Chinese film culture, the festival is set to become a feast for the haves as the city chosen for the event is the prime film market and highbrows are the target audience.

So what about the 9 million farmers that make up the absolute majority of the Chinese population and promise a gold mine for the movie industry?

"If every farmer spends 10 yuan (US$1.2) to see a film once every year, it makes 9 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion)," said Han Sanping, general manager of China Film Group Co..

Han's company produces about 40 films each year, few of which entertain rural audiences.

Ironically, films based on the countryside and the peasants' lives are often successful. Warm Spring produced by Shanxi Provincial Film Studio, for example, drew more than 4 million viewers nationwide and made 4 million yuan in net profit, a 200-percent return.

"The root of Chinese film is in the countryside, which offers a gold mine of resources," said Han. "We should target the domestic audience and build a solid foundation at home before we elbow into the world market."

Children's film: Harry Potter type desired

Another audience demographic neglected by mainstream Chinese cinema is children, which is why, overshadowing nearly all domestic children's films, the message owl, the flying sweeper and the visionless mantle in Harry Potter have fascinated Chinese children the same way Monkey King did their parents decades ago.

"The success of Harry Potter has set many Chinese filmmakers thinking," said Prof. Wang Quangen, a children's literature specialist with Beijing Normal University. "We should learn to activate the children's imagination and touch them with the subject matter."

Industry analysts say climbing costs, high risk and uncertain box office prospects have discouraged many filmmakers from producing children's films. "Besides, many parents are unconfident in domestic films and think they are merely tedious preaching," said Liu Jun, a researcher with the Beijing Film Academy.

As a noted film researcher, Liu is often invited to presentations of new films. "We see only one or two children's films out of every 20 or 30 new films -- and again, these are often foreign movies."

It's not that China is not good at shooting children's films, according to Liu. The Mystery Valley, for example, is just like a Chinese version of Home Alone, but has been denied by many big theaters. After all, it doesn't promise very high box office revenues."

Industry insiders say it costs 2 to 3 million yuan (US$246,000 to 370,000) to produce a children's film whereas box office revenues are only between 300,000 and 400,000 yuan (US$37,000 to 49,000).

According to Zhang Hongsen, vice-director of the State Film Administration, the Chinese government is planning to nurture children's blockbusters by encouraging top playwrights and filmmakers to produce children's films, and offering rewards in line with the quality and box office incomes of their products.

(Xinhua News Agency November 8, 2005)