At Wuxi, Chinese cinema is entering the digital age head-on. Technology is also helping to showcase Chinese culture and lifestyle to the world. The Chinese Hollywood: the stage is set and ambitions are clear. Located in Wuxi, in Jiangsu province in southern China, the digital cinema industrial park aims to become the nerve center of modern Chinese cinema. And it has the means to do so.
Founded in 2012 on the site of a former steel mill, the park spans 130 hectares. At the entrance, nothing suggests that behind these buildings a large portion of current Chinese cinema is being produced. Then the doors open and the soundstages follow one after another. Cameras, lighting, and especially digital equipment fill the space. The complex includes fifteen film studios and three digital studios dedicated to virtual filming and animation films. Most have been set up in the former steel mill hangars. Also known as Wuxi Studios, the site specializes in post-production, virtual production, and special effects.
Over 800 Chinese and foreign companies in the film and culture sectors are now gathered within this audiovisual ecosystem. Major productions such as The Captain and The Wandering Earth II were notably filmed and developed there.
Telling China's Story
One of Wuxi Studios' main assets lies in its digital soundstage equipped with 5G technology. The traditional green screen is no longer necessary. Facing the cameras stand immense LED screens on which a street, mountain, futuristic city, or historical landscape can appear. Actors evolve in a virtual set generated in real time.
A visit to Wuxi Studios feels like a journey between multiple worlds. From historical or prehistoric sets to virtual universes, the only limits seem to be the director's creativity and imagination. According to Li, who guided the tour, Wuxi deliberately chose to place this technology at the heart of its strategy. The city notably hosted the first joint laboratory dedicated to intelligent virtual filming based on a 5G environment.
It is in this digital space that the sector's dimensional shift and the ambitions of Chinese cinema are measured. But Wuxi doesn't just want to serve as a filming location. The park seeks to bring together the different links in the chain: creation, production, visual effects, animation, digital technologies, post-production, and distribution. Its facilities allow companies to work in the same environment and foster connections between traditional film professions and new technologies. In addition to major productions, the park also hosts the filming and production of television series primarily intended for Chinese audiences. To date, over 1,200 films have been shot or post-produced there.
At Wuxi Studios, cinema takes on an industrial dimension, with annual revenues approaching one billion dollars. However, the creation of the park responds to a broader objective than economic activity alone. Behind the studios, screens, and investments lies the ambition to tell China's story. Like the United States in the twentieth century, the country seeks to promote what could be called the "Chinese way of life." Cinema produced at Wuxi aims to show China to the world through its millennia-old history, its present, and its imagination.