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The American independent film-maker David Lynch and the French fashion house Dior would seem to make for strange bedfellows. Lynch is the director of some of the most uniquely disturbing cinematic visions of the past four decades. His work is delivered through the popular medium of cinema but appeals to a very specific audience. Dior markets exclusivity to the masses, using widespread recognition to sell a line of products that includes clothing, handbags and perfume. Yet in 2009, Dior sponsored the production of Lynch’s short film Lady Blue Shanghai, a sixteen-minute noir mystery starring French actress Marion Cotillard. The backer allowed the director complete creative control of the Shanghai-set production, providing that three conditions were met: a particular Dior accessory had to be featured prominently, the Oriental Pearl Tower had to be seen, and some scenes had to be shot in old Shanghai. Although it promotes a brand, Lady Blue Shanghai is a ‘short’ rather than a conventional commercial, albeit a short that contractually features a luxury product. Lady Blue Shanghai was made available via the Dior website, reaching audiences through new media while attracting the attention of the mainstream press due to the reputation of its director. This article will examine the dual status of Lady Blue Shanghai as a film by David Lynch and as a Dior project through reference to the director’s narrative and stylistic signatures, while assessing such authorial elements alongside the manner in which the brand is conveyed through his aesthetic sensibility.

This article will focus on the burgeoning production of low-budget feature film comedies in Mainland China. A number of these productions have achieved considerable success at the local box office since 2006. The popularity of these swiftly-produced features is the result of rapid industrialization and the increasing emphasis on genre in the Mainland China market. It also suggests a worrying trend in terms of the mass-production of films for local audiences; these films are manufactured in a rough manner with little regard for aesthetic quality or tonal consistency, leading to concerns about malformed genre product. This article outlines the definition, origins and variations of the low-budget comedies produced in China. Based on data gathered through several large-scale industry studies of the local audience, it will show that a relationship exists between the cultural mind-set of young cinemagoers and the styles of low-budget comedy films. To chart the success of this genre, and its evolution from low-budget production to mid-budget production due to consistent box office returns, the article will examine two industrially significant examples: Crazy Stone and Gao Xing. The former arguably started the genre, leading to a host of imitators, of which the latter has been particularly well-attended, despite evidencing a decline in quality as satirical humour is replaced by vulgarity. In this respect, it will be argued that the Mainland China production cycle of the low-budget comedy is an example of 'ShanZhai' culture as this is a form of commercial film-making that is largely based on imitation.

This article will consider the relationship between the city and the cinema with regard to the films of China's ‘Sixth Generation’, a group of filmmakers who mostly graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in the late 1980s and proceeded to make films on the subject of their nation's urban fabric. These are films which utilise city narrative to comment on social–economic change, but largely observe such conditions, rather than to take apolitical stance. To explore the urban representation of the Sixth Generation, this article will provide analysis of three works that depict life in top‐tier or second‐tier mainland China cities: Biandan, guniang/So Close to Paradise (1999), Suzhou he/Suzhou River (2000) and Xiari nuanyangyang/I Love Beijing (2001). The manner in which urban space is represented will be considered, alongside the social positioning of the characters, in order to address arguments made by scholars that these films focus on the plight of the individual rather than considering the wider implications of urban planning.

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