Chris BerryMengxia (Monga, 2010). But more recently, on the occasion of his appointment as jury chair at
the 2016 Shanghai International Film Festival, he declared “I am a Taiwanese director but I am
also a native of Beijing. My blood calls me to tell stories for all Chinese. Co-production is my
future direction” (Shanghai International Film Festival 2016).
This new configuration centered on Beijing may seem to take us back to the pre-1949 situ-
ation, where one city—in that case Shanghai—ruled supreme over the entire Chinese-language
film world. While it is true that Beijing is at the center of Chinese-language cinema and that
the film production industry is a transborder one again, there are significant differences. In the
pre-1949 era, filmmaking was centered physically in Shanghai, with small but separate filmmak-
ing industries in other cities, like Hong Kong, largely to target particular language markets. But
today, in the age of globalization, not only are there fewer barriers to transborder cooperation,
but digital filmmaking practices enable filmmakers based in different cities to work together.
In this regard, it makes sense that Doze Niu speaks of coproduction rather than of moving to
Beijing. If he chooses to, he can work with Beijing-based producers and make films targeted at
the mainland market without moving his base out of Taipei. A quick glance at the production
credits for any commercial Chinese film shows elements outsourced to various companies in
various cities, often not only in the Chinese-speaking world, but also across the region, such as
the Korean companies involved in the special effects for Mermaid. In this regard, too, Chinese
production practices are following the runaway productions of Hollywood.
This agility has led to a Chollywood practice of multi-sited production centered on Beijing
but involving companies and filmmakers across the Chinese-speaking world and further afield, in
combinations that change rapidly from one production to the next. These are the circumstances
that make Chollywood—today’s configuration of Chinese-language filmmaking—a transborder
assemblage.
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