China looms large on almost every horizon these days. The Chinas of expanding economic might, military ambition, cultural wealth, and human-rights questions all compete with or are supported by the largest country on Earth: the China of myth.

The focus on Chinese cinema at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival, taking place from next Thursday (September 27) to October 12, in no way purports to resolve any of these tensions. But its wide array of titles certainly rejects the notion of a monolithic national personality. There are a baker's dozen from the People's Republic proper, four features from Hong Kong, and another 17 or so from countries worldwide, either filmed in a Chinese language or with China as a core subject.

The films range from the gentle comedy of Getting Home , which covers a lot of bucolic countryside, to Lost in Beijing , a highly charged (especially for prudish commissars) sexual free-for-all that also displays grimy day-to-day life in the crowded modern capital. Elsewhere, new levels of poverty are addressed in Little Moth , while Chinese movies (and political currents) are celebrated in Mr. Cinema , about an elderly Hong Kong projectionist.

VIFF director Alan Franey acknowledges that some chariness may be present when nongovernmental organizations have to deal with Beijing, but he is quick to point out that the process involves more etiquette than actual bureaucratic manoeuvring.

"There's an assumption," Franey told the Georgia Straight during one of several conversations on the phone and in his Vancouver International Film Centre office, "that you have to vet every title with the authorities, and that isn't the way it works, exactly. In general, you have to appreciate that when dealing with Asia on a business level, it's more about saving face than observing specific rules–of not offending people who should be consulted, for instance. That said, we didn't run into any problems securing titles that we knew to be critical of China in some significant ways."

That VIFF's long-time head of programming, PoChu AuYeung, is originally from Hong Kong has probably helped in the communications department. Actually working in today's postcolonial Hong Kong, though, is a somewhat different matter. The programming director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Li Cheuk-to, when asked to address the same concerns, politely declined to comment on record.

Currently living in Vancouver, though, is one of the founders of that festival, James Young, who is now the artistic director of the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver. His organization has ties to the People's Republic, but he brings some objectivity and a lot of hands-on experience to the discussion.

"What you have to remember," Young says on the line from his Chinatown office, "is that everything, from film school to making the films to theatrical distribution, is controlled by the government. So it's not really analogous to anything in Europe, even where the governments are moderately involved in production or sales. In any case, it means they definitely know the movies by the time a festival is interested."

In the past, the VIFF hasn't had to wrestle too much with Beijing over film titles. Chuck Boller, who directs the Hawaii International Film Festival, has been at it longer. HIFF, in fact, shares with VIFF the largest contingent of Asian cinema in North America, with many more mainstream Chinese pictures than we see here. Boller says that dealing with China requires tricky footwork, but not for the reasons that observers might expect.

"I haven't encountered any truly censorious behaviour," the veteran fest head says from his Honolulu office. "They never told us we couldn't show films dealing with Tibet, for instance, which is something they were rumoured to have done. When Beijing is reluctant about something, it's usually not political but on a more social level. For instance, I know they asked the producers of Mission: Impossible III to remove one scene shot in Shanghai because it showed laundry hanging outside. They were literally embarrassed by the idea of showing dirty linen in public, whereas the filmmakers just saw it as colourful."

Such POV discrepancies are exactly the stuff of cinema; you could say that the visual arts are better placed than diplomats or journalists to deal with the heavy dialectics of local policy and global politics. Certainly, this is most significant when looking at the planet as a physical whole–and as one that is in significant trouble. For his part, Franey feels that this year's expanded Dragons & Tigers program dovetails in important ways with the parallel Climate for Change series, which examines issues of ecological stress.

"China's place in the world is so keen an issue in a globalized economy," the Vancouver chief declares, "that it shows up in films made in Germany and other places. And the whole issue of how China relates to the environment is going to take increasing importance."

Indeed, related questions show up in Chinese docs like Timber Gang , about the stripping of forest cover from a mountain, and Bin Gai , which looks, from another angle, at the same territory covered by the National Film Board of Canada's Up the Yangtze : the displacement of people and history by the questionable, but politically glamorous, Three Gorges Dam project. In a sense, we're all heading up the Yangtze River now, and this year's VIFF lengthy tour at least gives us the outlines of a less myth-tinged map to follow.