This thesis explores the reasons for the rise of the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers in the 1980s and early 1990s. Having come of age during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, these filmmakers were thoroughly disillusioned with the Communist Party. Their films were a bold critique of not only the Maoist era, but of the post-Mao incarnation of the Communist Party. Their early films stylistically surpassed any film China had produced in the preceding forty years. The Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 changed the outlook of this generation though. The new films of the early 1990s represented a more direct attack on the legitimacy of the Party. Official responses to their films included public bans and prohibitions on making new films. As the 1990s progressed, critics struggled to assess the legacy of this group. Some argued that these filmmakers sold out China to curry favor with the West. This paper argues that these films were both needed and important.
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