Filmmaker He Jianjun didn't just sit around bemoaning China's pirate DVD problem - he made a film about it. But the resulting Pirated Copy isn't a simple denunciation of the illegal trade. It's a clever drama exploring how illegal DVDs have become a cultural phenomenon in China, affecting all levels of society. What's more, among all the social observations, he manages to tell some rattling good stories.
He, who shot to fame as a leading light of China's independent 'Sixth Generation' with 1993's Red Beads and 1994's once-banned The Postman, builds a clever structure for Pirated Copy. He uses the fact that just about everybody in China buys illegal DVDs and VCDs to draw together some disparate storylines. Young students, middle-aged couples, gangsters, and university lecturers are just some of the people brought together by their love - or obsession - for DVD collecting.
'Pirate DVDs and VCDs are now omnipresent in Chinese life,' He says at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, where the film had its premiere. 'They are entrenched in every part of society. When I thought of making a film about this subject, I realised that just about everybody I know owned a lot of illegal discs. It wasn't just film people who collected them, either.'
Film companies, of course, justifiably complain that pirate DVDs take money out of the pockets of legitimate distributors and filmmakers. He doesn't disagree. But also he thinks that, on a cultural rather than economic level, the illegal DVD phenomenon does have its good points. Chinese viewers have such a limited poll of legally released films to choose from, the DVDs fill a gap, he says.
'These illegal DVDs definitely enrich the daily lives of a lot of people on a lot of different levels,' he says. 'People develop their own favourite genres and styles of film. They will go to a vendor and say, I want to see some porn, or I am interested in crime films, or I want to watch some European art films. The availability of DVDs encourages diversity in people's tastes, and that's healthy.'
He says film education is a case in point. One scene in Pirated Copy shows a teacher using an illegal copy of Pedro Almodovar's Atame! to illustrate a lecture about western filmmakers' treatment of sexuality. This really goes on, he says: 'Teachers have to resort to using pirate copies in the classroom, as the legal copies of many of these films aren't available. I think that this is a useful function of the illegal DVDs.'
One the other side of the cultural divide, Pirated Copy shows that pornography is rampant. One fascinating scene shows some middle-aged buyers stocking up on pornography. They are very specific in their choices - some prefer American-style porn, others European. Considering that sex films are so new to China, consumers seem to know a lot about them. 'The way that people have quickly learned about the different types of pornography in China by watching illegal DVDs is a phenomenon in itself,' He chuckles. 'It's a unique Chinese thing. People are specific about what kind of porn they want to see, even though it hasn't been available for long.'