Chinese cinema is counted in generations, and the ones this shelf holds are the fifth and everything after it. The Beijing Film Academy reopened in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution had closed it, and its first graduating class — Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang — spent the eighties making films the state alternately banned at home and sent to Cannes. Since Hero the story has been money rather than permission: the domestic audience grew large enough that a Chinese film no longer needs a foreign festival, and what still travels outward is martial arts and animation.