“History Of Contemporary China” Class 2011-2012
Prof. A. Pisarev
The Chinese Cinema Industry During The
Cultural Revolution
Culture And Politics In The1966-1976 Period
Micucci Giordano
818918
Index
The Chinese Cinema Industry During The Cultural Revolution
 Introduction
1. Chinese Cinema
o Brief introduction to Chinese cinema history
o Effects of the Cultural Revolution on cinema productions
2. Semiotics’ issues
o Role of the Chine Communist Party on films production
o Censorship
 Conclusions
 References
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INTRODUCTION
From a historical point of view, political power in China identified in movies
production the most effective mean of mass mobilization and an excellent way of
persuasion. The changes of leadership at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in
1966 did not change the conviction that cinema was the most useful tool to persuade
the public. For the leaders, the film industry offered many advantages in carrying on
the modernization of Chinese culture and society, which actually was the main aim of
the revolution itself.
The purpose of this paper is to dispel several myths, now consolidated, regarding
movies audience during the ten years of Cultural Revolution and its transformations.
Legends, like many others related to the Cultural Revolution, have taken the forms of
myth, through a mixture of repetition, nostalgia and the general attitude of believing
true what oneself wants. Below are listed four of the most common generalizations:
1. All the Chinese films produced before 1966 have been banned during the
Cultural Revolution.
2. Films from abroad were also out of circulation.
3. Cinema public hated those few films that they were allowed to see.
4. There has been a general decline in cinema audiences, except for
the compulsory watching of "model works".
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1. Chinese Cinema
Brief introduction to Chinese Cinema history
It is acknowledged that, since its beginning in 1905, the development of film
production in Mainland China has gone through different stylistic phases; each phase
was significant of a particular economic, cultural or political period. We can divide
that period in the following phases: the early social-problems before the mid-1920s
corresponded to a non-particular period in Chinese film production, because of the
industry’s recent birth; social/socialist realist cinema during the Sino-Japanese war
and the subsequent Chinese civil war (1930s-1940s); revolutionary propaganda
cinema, whose description of the sub-period of the Cultural Revolution is the aim of
this paper, during Mao’s era (in the1949-1976 period); critical realist cinema from
the late 1970s to the early 1980s; the art cinema movement, which began in the early
1970s during the last phases of the Cultural Revolution and got its apex in the mid1980s with the graduations of the directors of the so called “Fifth Generation” from
the Beijing Film Academy (whom, in turn, reached the international spotlight in
1990s); the reemerging of the entertainment movies wave since the mid-1980s
(which coincides with the new Chinese foreign policies of Deng Xiaoping).1
Films have thus played a prominent role in the cultural life of China between 1966
and 1976, despite no new titles have been released in the four years between the mid1966 and the end of 1970. The "model works" (yangbanxi2) appeared on the Chinese
Phases suggested by Ying Zhu’s book, Chinese Cinema During The Era Of Reform, The Ingenuity Of The
System; Chapter 1.
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样板戏 (Yàngbǎn xì), “model opera” or “revolutionary operas” or “model works”. According to Shu
Jianglu’s book When Huai Flowers Bloom, in total, eight revolutionary operas were made, and they have
been the only forms of artistic expression allowed in China for 5 years, between 1969 and 1973/1974.
2
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screens from October 1st 1970. Starting from 1973, once resumed the production of
“feature films”, the Chinese public has been able to see new original titles.
Effects of the Cultural Revolution on cinema productions
Since 1964, the press and all the other medias were blaming the so-called “bourgeois
art and literature”; the objectives of those attacks were even several films. However,
in order to let the people clearly understand the reactionary nature of these titles, it
was necessary that the films should be watched. Then, in the early phase of the
Cultural Revolution (1964-1968/1970) there were several compulsory projections of
illegal films “for political studies” (including Hollywood films) and, at the same time,
no more films’ production; hence, the CCP’s consideration of cinema: a powerful
mean in mass-shaping and a decidedly modern art form, associated with the West,
standardized and reproducible. Watching films containing “political errors” was even
a powerful tool to re-educate the cinema audience in terms of culture and politics.
Then, films’ production, after the stop in 1966, started again in 1970. The new films
were well-packaged and standardized versions of operas, ballets and modernized
symphonies, carrying their own cultural patterns, in identical versions but more and
more refined, up to the most remote corners of China, as it will be further discussed;
their name was “yangbanxi”, the Chinese word for “model/revolutionary operas”, and
their goal was to promote new cultural “heroes” (most of those films concerned
communist heroes or heroics). The introduction of the model operas was planned and
engineered by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, who had been inspired by the great
Hollywood musicals. The production of “feature films” restarted only in 1973, under
a strict control of the CCP.
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2. Semiotics’ issues
Role of the Chinese Communist Party in films production
The contents of the films were decided by the CCP which operated through the “Film
Guidance Committee”, a group of thirty-two people which included famous artists
and novelists over CCP members; the aim of this office was to set up “film units”
able to operate (paradoxically) autonomously in the creation of films (modeled on
People’s Communes), whose subject was previously decided by the committee itself,
which set the ideological and artistic standards.
Once produced, the film had to be distributed. The first distribution network was
established during the 1950s, at the same time of the Film Guidance Committee;
initially it was a web of small groups of comrades operating in the local distribution.
In the late 1950s it began a process which ended during the first years of the Cultural
Revolution: an office under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture took over the
duties of those several distribution units, the so-called “Central Film Management
Bureau”; the new aims of this office were purchasing films from other socialist
countries (and distributing them) and reaching the remotest corners of China to allow
every Chinese citizen to receive the ideological messages from Beijing.
These two offices were co-operating to bring the right films in the right places,
paying attention to the peculiarities of different audiences: early-Soviet films in the
countryside, great variety of the “new feature-films” (including films from abroad, in
particular from India, Korea, Albania) in the cities (the bigger the city was, the
greater the variety was), films based on yangbanxi in both countryside and cities.
After the Cultural Revolution, these two offices became part of the “State
Administration Office Of Radio Film And Television” 3 ; the still-existing bureau
国家广播电影视总局电影管理局 (Guójiā guǎngbò diànyǐng shì zǒng jú diànyǐng guǎnlǐ jú), is an
executive branch under the State Council of the People's Republic of China; result of the merging of
different media offices in the period 1986 - 1988. Its main task is the administration and supervision of stateowned enterprises engaged in the television, radio, and film industries.
3
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under the Ministry of Culture which, right now, continues to make a significant (but
lighter) pressure on film producing.
Censorship
Films, considered in that time as a media, were a powerful mean of ideological and
political
theory
education.
From that point of view, film-media not only undertook the task of spreading a
certain scientific and cultural knowledge, but also managed to help students, villains,
workers to establish a “scientific” world outlook; it also reflected the educational and
informative CCP’s goals. Film media used in the teaching of ideological and
political theory had been, during the cultural revolution, the most important mean in
setting the “new social order” claimed by the Central Committee of the CCP in 1966.
It was therefore extremely important not to forbid the watching of films containing
“political errors”; so, the Chinese government decided to ban the private film
companies (whose directors’ idea could have been dangerous) and make the whole
national film industry (those few private studios still open in Shanghai, Beijing and
Xi’an) public with a process that lasted two years (1968-1970).
The acknowledgement of the journeyman director Cheng Yin 4 (one of the most
important directors between 1949 and the late 1960s, who always worked for the
national film industry) that he was more concerned with avoiding political errors than
achieving artistic excellence, reveals all too clearly the pressures which the filmmakers were operating under. Indeed, the extraordinary level of interference by the
organs of the state, and by the cinema offices at every stage of the film-making
process and the limited artistic quality of the majority of the films of this period are
undeniable.
4
Cheng Yin (1917-1984) was a director who was known for his skill in making films of the revolutionary
wars and revolutionary history. The long years he spent in the army helped him obtain the quality of a
statesman, observing matters from a macroscopic and high angle. In his lifetime, Cheng Yin directed more
than ten films.
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CONCLUSION
In this short essay on Cultural Revolution I tried to suggest how, in those years, for
cinema’s audience there was something more than the usual tales of cruelty and
suffering which the memorials of those times are full of. In my opinion,
two issues are particularly fascinating. First, the considerable effort to facilitate film
watching in all corners of China by the CCP, so that the public could fully reap
social and political messages that the movies would convey; messages contained in
films on different subjects and produced in public (but various) cinema studios, so
that a minimum movie-range was offered; even in the cities, in those cultural
circles where existed stricter rules, the public had the chance to partly choose what
he
wanted to
see
and also
issue, however, contradicts the
what
first. Despite
he
the
great
preferred.
The second
attention paid
to
the
new feature film in the first part of the 1970s, there was no chance to check out which
were the messages and the pleasures that the public actually derived from the
experience of cinema-going because of the poor attention paid to the audiences’
feedbacks by the CCP’s organs and bureaus. The sensations gained by the public
enjoying films and the ones intended by the directors (therefore, the State) were not
always the same.
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References
Clark, Paul, “Chinese Cinema, Culture And Politics Since 1949”, USA, Cambridge
University Press, 1987.
Ying, Zhu, “Chinese Cinema During The Era Of Reform, The Ingenuity Of The
System”, USA, Praeger, 2003.
Müller, Marco; Pollacchi,Elena, “Ombre Elettriche”, Italy, Mondadori Electa, 2005.
Shu, Jianglu, “When Huai Flowers Bloom, Stories Of The Cultural Revolution”,
USA, State of New York University Press, 2007.
Song, Hwee; Ward, Julian, “Chinese Cinema Book”, UK, British Film Institute,
2011.
Article by Hays Jeff, “Cultural Revolution And Films”
< www.factsanddetails.com > visited on April 25th, 2012.
Essay by 张馨 (Zhāng xīn), (Diànyǐng méitǐ zài sīxiǎng zhèngzhì lǐlùn zhōng de
yìngyòng yánjiū), “电影媒体在思想政治理论中的应用研究”, “Application of film
media in ideological and political theory”.
<www.cnki.net> visited on April 19th , 2012.
Editorial, unsigned, “Profile Of Chinese Film Industry”
<www.chinesefilms.cn> visited on April 26th, 2012.
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