After receiving warm applause from the students, Peng Yichen did not feel proud, but immediately entered the topic of his lecture.

"Thank you, thank you!" he pressed his hands and motioned for everyone to be quiet, and continued.

"115 years ago, when the citizens of Paris watched the first official screening of the film "The Train Arrives" and were frightened and hid under the table, they wondered if the film was art or business.

In 1902, when Georges Mérieux's "Journey to the Moon" was a huge success and was called "the first science fiction film in history", he wondered whether cinema was art or commerce.

From the very beginning of the advent of movies, they were meant to be used for human entertainment.

When we sit in the cinema, we are attracted by the world shaped by light and shadow, crying or laughing, happy or sad, as if falling into a dream, as if experiencing another life.

That's the biggest attraction of cinema, and that's why I chose the title of today's lecture 'Movie Dream Factory'.

I know, almost everyone who knows about movies, knows it.

In 1911, Giotto Canudou published his famous treatise entitled "Manifesto of the Seventh Art", in which he declared for the first time that cinema was an art, a 'seventh art' that combined the six arts of architecture, music, painting, sculpture, poetry and dance.

Many people tout art as incomparably lofty, as if being high is never something noble that ordinary people can touch.

But in my opinion, art is skill, which refers to your ability and ability in a certain industry, and art is the means, which refers to how you find a way to sell your works and craftsmanship.

To put it bluntly, only those who have the ability to sell their works are called art.

Hungry to death, and boasting all day long that he is an artist, that's either a madman or a fool, that's not called art.

Therefore, I think that dividing films into commercial films and art films is pure inexplicable nonsense, art and commerce are fundamentally the same thing, how can there be a distinction between art films and commercial films?

In my eyes, there are only two kinds of movies in the world, good and bad.

What can make money is not necessarily a good movie, but what can't make money must not be a good movie, that's all!"

When Peng Yichen said this, there was immediately a burst of applause from the audience, and then there was a round of applause.

It's not that everyone in the audience supports Peng Yichen's views, it's just that at present, in film schools, teachers often support restricting commercial films and vigorously developing art films.

However, students often have more of their own ideas and are not willing to be constrained by the opinions of their teachers.

Therefore, they have a greater sense of identification with Peng Yichen's fresh interpretation of "art".

"Yes, there are only two kinds of movies in the world, good and bad! That's a good statement!"

The students were attracted by Peng Yichen's statements, which the teachers in the academy had never said.

It wasn't until today that they discovered that they could still start the so-called "commercial film and art film dispute" from this angle!

After the students discussed for a few seconds, and the focus returned to him, Peng Yichen continued.

"Like I just said. We all know that since the advent of movies, it has been a mass consumer product that meets the entertainment needs of urban civilians. It was first played in a cabaret playground and later had a small theater dedicated to screenings.

In 1903, Powter's "The Life of an American Fireman" and "The Great Train Robbery" made the film develop from a novel 'trick' to an art with fixed rules and development directions.

Therefore, the fundamental reason for the existence of movies is mass entertainment. Its artistic value, on the contrary, is slowly endowed by people with the continuous progress of commerce!

That's the first question I want you to think about today.

That is: film is originally an art born of commercial behavior, and without commerce, there would be no film, let alone the so-called art film.

So why do so many people still have to put the so-called commercial or artistic labels and shackles on the film?"

Peng Yichen stood on the podium and asked all the students very seriously.

Hearing Peng Yichen's question, everyone in the audience, even those media reporters, was also asking in their hearts, why did anyone do this?

Seeing everyone's thoughtful expressions, Peng Yichen did not immediately answer the question he had asked before.

Instead, he smiled and diverted the topic.

"Anyone who has studied history knows it. Before the Tang Dynasty in China, books and knowledge were in the hands of the family of scholars.

Cultural inheritance is controlled by a very small number of people, who rely on this way of monopolizing knowledge, controlling the discourse and management of the entire country, blocking the channels for the lower classes of people to rise. I hope to rely on this way to let my family rule the lower class people for thousands of generations.

The reason why they were able to monopolize knowledge was that the conditions for cultural dissemination at that time were limited, and there were very few people who could afford to buy books, and even fewer people who could understand them.

They relied on the method of 'heirloom of poetry and books' to control the interpretation of culture and knowledge in their own hands to obtain high power.

This is what some defenders of so-called 'art cinema' imagine today.

Their criterion for judging movies is not whether they are good or not, not whether the audience likes it or not, but whether most people can understand it.

If everyone can't understand it, it is the standard for evaluating the so-called profound art films.

Is that why I'm looking for a dog to make a movie that all humans can't understand, and that dog is a great artist!"

"Ha, ha, ha......"

Peng Yichen's words made all the students in the audience laugh.

Taking his breath, he continued:

"Let's go back and think about the first question I just asked.

Why is it that movies that are originally used by the public for entertainment are given various artistic, connotation and other labels by others, and have to be divided into commercial films or art films?

Why does the audience say that it is a good-looking movie, but when it comes to some people's mouths, it is a commercial movie full of copper smell?

Why do audiences watch sleepy movies that are considered noble art films in the eyes of some people?

Is it that some so-called film experts can't make movies that the public loves, so they play tricks and want to control the criteria for judging the 'good and bad' of movies in their own hands.

And the audience, who is the real audience of the movie, doesn't have the right to evaluate and choose the movie according to their own preferences and cognition?

I don't have answers to these questions. I only remembered a phrase I once heard, 'If we don't occupy the high ground, the enemy will definitely occupy it.'"

Nowadays, it is no longer a feudal ancient society, and those days when you want to fool the audience by playing with theoretical terms, relying on hypocritical artistic packaging to pretend to be high, and you can blow bad movies into classic movies are long gone.

The ultimate meaning of a movie is to be good-looking, to create a dream for the audience, if Chinese filmmakers can't make movies that meet the preferences of our Chinese audiences.

Then, Hollywood, Bollywood, Bangziguo and other foreign filmmakers will come to satisfy the Chinese audience's desire to watch movies and occupy our film market.

Wait until that day, the real end of Chinese domestic movies will come, and it will be too late to regret it!"

After saying this, the audience was silent.

Everyone has to face the fact that although Peng Yichen's words are very ugly, this is the naked, naked reality.

……