Abstract

International co-productions have become a dominant practice in the film industry. Within this emerging trend, China has become a major participant and is using it as an important method to enter the global market. Despite the enhanced globalization of the film industry, many preceding studies consider it as a national industry and investigate it from this context. Therefore, this paper uses the concept of the global value chain in order to understand more effectively the fragmentation of the film value chain. This framework helps examine how filmmakers denationalize the film value chain by collaborating with foreign partners on a global scale. This paper further conducts a case study of the Sino-US co-produced movie, The Great Wall. It was China’s most expensive movie to date, and is frequently cited as the new model for producing a “true” international co-production. This paper finds that with various tools of internationalization, international co-productions can help the Chinese side increase its involvement in all processes, and can lead to the reduction of the national identity in films. Such a process helps attract a more global audience. In addition, this paper provides useful guidelines for policy makers to respond effectively to the increasing globalization in the cultural industries.


Keywords

China, Hollywood, global value chain, international co-productions, The Great Wall

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Kritika Kultura
Department of English
School of Humanities
Ateneo de Manila University

The Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) declares Kritika Kultura as a CHED-recognized journal under the Journal Challenge Category of its Journal Incentive Program.

International Board of Editors

Jan Baetens
Professor
Faculty of Arts
Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium)

Joel David
Professor of Cultural Studies
Inha University (South Korea)

Michael Denning
Professor of American Studies and English
Department of English
Yale University (US)

Faruk
Faculty of Cultural Sciences
Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia)

Regenia Gagnier
Professor of English
University of Exeter (UK)

Leela Gandhi
John Hawkes Professor of the Humanities and English
Brown University (US)

Inderpal Grewal
Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies
Professor of South Asian Studies, Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies
Yale University (US)

Peter Horn
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Lifetime Fellow
University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Honorary Professor and Research Associate in German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Anette Horn
Professor of German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

David Lloyd
Distinguished Professor of English
University of California, Riverside (US)

Bienvenido Lumbera
National Artist for Literature
Professor Emeritus
University of the Philippines

Rajeev S. Patke
Director of the Division of Humanities
Professor of Humanities
Yale NUS College (Singapore)

Vicente L. Rafael
Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History
University of Washington (US)

Vaidehi Ramanathan
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Davis (US)

Temario Rivera
Professorial Lecturer
Department of Political Science
University of the Philippines

E. San Juan, Jr.
Philippines Studies Center (US)

Neferti X.M. Tadiar
Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Barnard College (US)
Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Columbia University (US)

Antony Tatlow
Honorary Professor of Drama
Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)