Date: 20th November 2000

Even Chinese Filmmakers Encounter Piracy At Home


Popular Chinese film directors are now having to deal with the issue of piracy in their country just as U.S. filmmakers have for some time, the London Financial Times observed today (Monday), citing in particular top Chinese director Feng Xiaogang, whose latest movie, Sigh, is being bootlegged on video disks throughout the country.

"Piracy has eaten up half of my box office," Feng told the newspaper. The FT said that the extent of such piracy is "truly astounding," pointing to estimates indicating that it could account for a quarter of all Chinese manufacturing and that halting it "could cause havoc" in the economy. "I used to think the problem of the Chinese industry lay in the quality of the films but now, the better a film is, the more severely it is pirated," Feng told the FT. "It makes me wonder whether I should make a good film or a bad one."

Source: Studio Briefing