Chinese Cinema at the Invitation of French Cinema Literati

By examining in detail the organisation of France's most important events dedicated to Chinese films since the 1980s, this chapter advances the thesis that Chinese cinema's diffusion abroad might have been largely motivated and driven by target countries' domestic factors that are independent of China's development in film industry and of the promotion efforts made by Chinese filmmakers and public authorities, contrary to what is commonly stated in historical narratives about Chinese cinema's circulation in the rest of the world. In the case of France, the introduction and promotion of a large number of Chinese films during the past four decades were not a logical result of Chinese cinema's worldwide emergence but the outcome of initiatives made by local networks that were mainly composed of French university scholars (especially sinologists) and common cinephiles.