Revolutionary becomings : documentary media in twentieth-century China / Ying Qian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Qian, Ying (Associate professor), author.

Series:

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Investigating visible evidence: new challenges for documentary

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Documentary films--China--History and criticism.

Documentary films.

Motion pictures--Political aspects--China.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--China--History--20th century.

Motion pictures--Political aspects.

China.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 305 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Documentary media in 20th-century China

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Documentary film was central to the direction of twentieth-century Chinese revolutionary politics and in how the Chinese came to understand their social and political realities. Frequently dismissed as propaganda, documentaries in China played a complex and integral role in mediating and shaping particular paths of revolution from the nationalist government of Sun Yat-Sen to the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Far from having a fixed view of the world, Ying Qian argues that the Chinese state and state ideologies were unstable and in constant flux, only becoming actualized in concrete social processes and through media and mediation. Examining a wide range of documentaries, including educational, industrial, and scientific films, Qian places documentary filmmaking in the context of other institutions in a revolutionary and modernizing China. She considers how documentary films proposed different visions of leadership, industrialization, labor, ethnicity as well as China's relationship to the world, and the politics of history and remembering. Ultimately, her book proposes a new way of understanding documentaries in relation to political networks and social infrastructures to reveal cinema's participation in arenas conventionally considered quite separate to provide a better understanding of media's role in revolutionary processes"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Emergence : colonial war, nationalist revolution and documentary's beginnings

Bombs and sea-farings : documentaries hard and soft

Winning realities : wartime propaganda and solidarity

When Taylorism met revolutionary romanticism : Great Leap temporalities

The uncertainty of political knowledge : documentary in crisis

Rehabilitation : documentary in the post-Mao decade.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Other Format:

Online version : Qian, Ying (Associate professor) Revolutionary Becomings

ISBN:

9780231204460

0231204469

9780231204477

0231204477

OCLC:

1392167905

Publisher Number:

90101859629