Chinese director Jia Zhangke, who won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival with his Still Life, has warned the fixation with big budget blockbusters could erode creativity in China's film industry.

Jia said he hoped more Chinese films would portray the lives of common people, rather than being just commercial extravaganzas.

He denied he was against making commercially-oriented films, but he objected to the "money worship" attitude in producing blockbusters.

"The model for those commercial films is to gain huge profits by pinning hopes on big investments, which will remove creativity and imagination from Chinese films," said Jia Zhangke.

Jia was speaking after the box office takings of Still Life crept into just five figures in sharp contrast to Zhang Yimou's latest epic story Curse of the Golden Flower, which so far collected 150 million yuan (US$19.23 million). Both films opened on Dec. 14.

"Blockbusters are powerful because they attract more investment, big stars and channels to advertise," Jia said, citing the example of Zhang Yimou's Hero released in 2002, which holds China's box office record with 250 million yuan (US$32 million) in revenue.

However, Chinese directors were forced to recoup the huge investments in commercial films by resorting to period costume, martial arts epics, which were favored by foreign audiences. The only theme to attract foreigners had become the favorite topic of Chinese directors, he said, citing Zhang Yimou's Hero, Cheng Kaige's The Promise and Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet, all martial arts films with simple plots.

Commercial films helped the Chinese box office break free from 10 years in the doldrums. Before 2003, home-made movie box office takings sat on a constant one billion yuan (US$128 million). In 2004, Chinese films pulled in 1.5 billion yuan (US$192 million), rising to two billion yuan (US$256 million) in 2005 with 1.6 billion yuan (US$205 million) coming from overseas.

This year, with eight Chinese films boasting budgets exceeding 100 million yuan (US$12.8 million), takings are expected to hit a record 2.6 billion yuan (US$333 million).

The movie market needed both blockbusters and low-cost films as medium or low-cost productions were the cinema mainstays, said Geng Xilin, assistant general manager of China Film Group Corporation, adding medium and low-cost films took 70 percent of the US box office.

"The market will be more prosperous when viewers have more choice," said Geng.

(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2006)