Practicing Runaway: What Happened to Pu Shunqing in the Early Chinese Film Industry?

本論文旨在探討1914年至1929年間，上海報刊有關卓別林電影廣告與新聞報導評論所呈現卓別林明星形象之意涵，以及卓別林與其電影對上海社會、中國電影發展與文化層面的影響。1914年至1929年間，卓別林在上海擁有「滑稽大王」的封號，因此本論文以此為切入點，探討其明星形象建構歷程。明星形象主要由「銀幕人格」與真實人格兩部分組成，從1910年代起，上海報紙開始報導評論卓別林的電影，以及他在銀幕下的平日作息等生活情況。此一兼顧卓別林「銀幕人格」與真實人格的報導方式，不僅有助於上海觀眾認識卓別林及其作品，也對1920年代上海觀眾評價卓別林，並建構其明星形象產生影響。1920年代以後，上海報刊對於卓別林「銀幕人格」與真實性格有更完整而深入的報導評析。上海影評人強調卓別林身兼編、導、演全才，其電影作品寓意深刻，具藝術性，乃其真實人生經歷的心血結晶，從而建構出他多元豐富的明星形象，深植上海觀眾心中，是另一位同封為「滑稽大王」的明星勞德無法望其項背的。 卓別林的明星形象對於1920年代的上海社會產生重要的影響。他的「銀幕人格」是中國早期國產喜劇電影的靈感來源，其電影作品與所發表的相關言論，也成為上海影業界反思中國電影業發展的重要參考與依據。另一方面，卓別林的明星形象常被引為商品廣告，甚至一度成為中國國產香烟廣告的主角，顯見他的明星形象廣為上海民眾所接受，在日常生活產生影響。簡言之，就跨國歷史文化的角度而言，卓別林明星形象及其電影作品，可說是1910年代至1920年代間中國電影文化資產的一部分，也是促進中美文化交流重要的明星人物與媒介，有其相當的歷史價值與意義。

With the continuous improvement of Chinese urban per capita national income, leisure and entertainment has become an important part of people's life, and the entertainment expenditures are accounting for an increasing proportion of total consumption. Movies, as a leisure project, has attracted more and more Chinese people' interest. At present, China is the second largest film market in the world, which is fast growing. According to the PWC's report in 2014, in 2018, Chinese film box office revenue will increase by 88%, from $31.3 billion in 2013 to $59 billion. It is suggesting that Chinese film industry has a bright prospect. This paper uses SCP paradigm of industrial organization theory to research China's film industry. We find that: Chinese film production market is a competitive market; the film issuing market is oligopolistic, type III market; and the film cinema market belongs to an oligopolistic, type IV market. At the same time, the film market behavior and market performance analysis shows that China's film market is in the stage of vigorous development. Finally, this paper proposes several suggestions for the development of China's film industry. With the continuous improvement of Chinese urban per capita national income, movies, as a leisure project, has attracted more and more Chinese people' interest. At present, China is the second largest film market in the world, which is fast growing. According to the PWC's report in 2014, in 2018, Chinese film box office revenue will increase by 88%, from $31.3 billion in 2013 to $59 billion. It is suggesting that Chinese film industry has a bright prospect. This paper uses SCP paradigm of industrial organization theory to research China's film industry. We find that: Chinese film production market is a competitive market; the film issuing market is oligopolistic, type III market; and the film cinema market belongs to an oligopolistic, type IV market. At the same time, the film market behavior and market performance analysis shows that China's film market is in the stage of vigorous development. Finally, this paper proposes several suggestions for the development of China's film industry. In 1959, Bain, Kaysen and Turner, which were called as Harvard School, proposed empirical research as the main means of the industrial analysis, and there are three aspects: the structure, conduct, performance, which is denominated SCP paradigm analysis framework, to analyze a specific industry, and through the public policy of the government to adjust the competition pattern of the industry. At present, there are many scholars studying the competitiveness evaluation, industrial organization, experience in trade and industry chain of China's film industry. Among them, Dong Xiao Lin and Wu Shan, in American movie industry trade experience and of China's film trade revelation, revealed the development experience and inspiration of the American film industry trade for China film industry and found out the effective way to promote the globalization development of China's film industry. Gao Cheng, in High osmium based on the SCP analysis framework, China Film Industry Research, used SCP paradigm to study China's film industry, but the data was before 2005, coupled with the rapid development of the industry in the recent years, the research is slightly outdated. In view of the film industry of our country, the present cultural life of the residents, and the recreational importance of the industry, further analysis of the film industry's market concentration and performance will undoubtedly have a significant importance.

Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood explores when, how, and why women were accepted as filmmakers in the 1910s and why, by the 1920s, those opportunities had disappeared. In looking at the early film industry as an industry-a place of work-Mahar not only unravels the mystery of the disappearing female filmmaker but untangles the complicated relationship among gender, work culture, and within modern industrial organizations. In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone-male and female-helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root. Mahar's study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate big business of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open-and close-opportunities for women.

ABSTRACTThis article reviews the role of wenyi in Chinese cinema from the turn of the twentieth century to the breakout of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937. Wenyi/letters and arts, a loan word from the Japanese bungei, was associated with western fiction, and concepts of humanism, equality and freedom. These concepts were propagated by translators of Japanese and western literature, many of whom belonged to the Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly School and were key agents in the nascent culture industry, leaving their marks in intertwined fields, including literature and cinema. By tracing their crossover activities we find evidence of the fertility of the wenyi concept in early cinema. Furthermore, our findings show that in order to sell motion pictures, the early film industry tended to brand film as a new type of wenyi commodity, thereby mobilizing wenyi as a marketing strategy to help purvey movies to audiences with cosmopolitan aspirations.

This paper examines the evolving habitus of English translators/subtitlers working on films (1984–2024) by Chinese fifth-generation directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. An analysis of 32 films shows a significant shift: initially dominated by native English speakers from the cultural industries or the Chinese studies circle, currently, the field of Chinese film translation has attracted native Chinese speakers with film industry or audiovisual translation (AVT) experience. The decreased reliance on foreign language experts and a corresponding increase in the selection of source-situated translators/subtitlers indicate a divergence from the norm of translating into one’s first language. The reasons behind this divergence lie in the influence of the marketisation of China’s film industry, the filmmakers’ increasing focus on the domestic market—especially after the pandemic—and the professionalisation of AVT in China. Employing Bourdieu’s theory, this study analyses the translators’/subtitlers’ educational backgrounds and career trajectories, focusing on their experience with the Chinese language and China. It identifies three phases in the evolution of their habitus: target-culture translators/subtitlers in the early centralised era, industry-experienced translators/subtitlers after the film marketisation, and domestic translators/subtitlers since the pandemic. Lay summary Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige are two of the most prominent filmmakers in the contemporary Chinese film industry, widely recognised as leading figures among the Chinese fifth-generation directors, also known as Chinese New Wave auteurs. Their groundbreaking collaboration on The Yellow Earth (1984), created shortly after their graduation from the Beijing Film Academy, marked a turning point that brought Chinese cinema onto the international stage. Since then, both directors have achieved global renown, producing numerous influential works.To explore how their films have been made accessible to English-speaking audiences, I examined the end credits of 17 films by Chen and 25 by Zhang, focusing on those credited with English subtitling, often labelled as “English Subtitles,” “English Translation,” “English Subtitle Translation,” “Translation,” or “Translator” etc. Through this process, I discovered 46 individuals involved in translating or subtitling these works, of whom 19 were identified for further analysis based on online profile searches. I then researched the linguistic skills, educational backgrounds, and professional experiences of these 19 translators or subtitlers to understand their development trajectories through the lens of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. A translator’s habitus is the disposition guiding their decisions, shaped by childhood, education, and the pursuit of capital within the field.This analysis revealed a shift in subtitling practices—from relying primarily on native English speakers from the culture industry or Chinese studies circle to recruiting native Chinese speakers with Chinese film industry experience or translation expertise—a change that reflects a broader trend in Chinese film subtitling. This evolution challenges the conventional norm of translating exclusively into one’s native language. In examining this norm’s breach, I considered several factors: the increasing marketisation of the Chinese film industry, the recent emphasis on the domestic film market, the growth of Chinese film and television translation companies, and the establishment of industry-specific translation associations. Lay summary Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige are two of the most prominent filmmakers in the contemporary Chinese film industry, widely recognised as leading figures among the Chinese fifth-generation directors, also known as Chinese New Wave auteurs. Their groundbreaking collaboration on The Yellow Earth (1984)—with Chen serving as director and Zhang as cinematographer—shortly after their graduation from the Beijing Film Academy, marked a turning point that brought Chinese cinema onto the international stage. Since then, both directors have achieved global renown, producing numerous influential works.To explore how their films have been made accessible to English-speaking audiences, I examined the end credits of 17 films by Chen and 25 by Zhang, focusing on those credited with English subtitling, often labelled as “English Subtitles,” “English Translation,” “English Subtitle Translation,” “Translation,” or “Translator” etc. Through this process, I discovered 46 individuals involved in translating or subtitling these works, of whom 19 were identified for further analysis based on online profile searches. I then researched the linguistic skills, educational backgrounds, and professional experiences of these 19 translators or subtitlers to understand their development trajectories through the lens of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. A translator’s habitus is the disposition guiding their decisions, shaped by childhood, education, and the pursuit of capital within the field.This analysis revealed a shift in subtitling practices—from relying primarily on native English speakers from the culture industry or Chinese studies circle to recruiting native Chinese speakers with Chinese film industry experience or translation expertise—a change that reflects a broader trend in Chinese film subtitling. This evolution challenges the conventional norm of translating exclusively into one’s native language. In examining this norm’s breach, I considered several factors: the increasing marketisation of the Chinese film industry, the recent emphasis on the domestic film market, the growth of Chinese film and television translation companies, and theestablishment of industry-specific translation associations.

In China the film market is gaining importance from the cultural and economic point of view not only at national level, but also for foreign producers. The Chinese box office and film admissions are growing year after year and Chinese film and related companies are becoming more and more strong. This trend is due to many factors someone more general as family incomes growth, people flows from countryside to towns, urban development and big commercial center dissemination. In that framework the film industry was pushed by public policies toward cultural and creative industries development. But also the desire of the Government to improve the Chinese soft power played an important role in helping Chinese companies to «go out» and try to play in the global film market. The need to renew cultural and social cohesion and collective identity was a third component that put the film industry in the center of the cultural industries field. The Hollywood film industry in that changing Chinese market is playing an important role, but bring also some problems that are described in the article.

Similar to many creative (and other) industries, the film and television industries have for long been permeated by male norms, and by the male worker as the norm. In this context, women workers have always been considered "oddities" – unless they have acted in front of the camera. To a large extent, women have been (and still are) image (Fischer, 1976; Mulvey, 1975). Women's work behind the camera have been counteracted, not least through efforts to exclude them from positions characterized as "creative" or "above-the-line" such as director, producer, and script writer. Further, women have been met with pervading difficulties in allocating finances for their projects and with circumscribed possibilities to have their work screened in the cinema. And although (a few) women are key through their function as "image," films with a woman protagonist are usually provided with a lesser budget than films with a male lead, and women actors get distinctly less paid than their male counterparts (SFI, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2017/08/22/full-list-the-worlds-highest-paid-actors-and-actresses-2017/?sh=2e1c961f3751). Let us give an example of the former: in the Swedish film industry, recently hailed worldwide of being one of the most gender equal screening industries, feature films made between 2013 and 2016 differed in terms of budget depending on the whether the protagonist in a film was male or female. Films with a male lead had on average a 33% higher budget than films with a woman lead. In that same period, women feature film directors had on average a budget ranging between 66% and 86% of the budget of films with a man as director (SFI, 2018). The report published in 2018, by the Swedish Film Institute, concluded that: "[films with women in] key functions generally have overall lower budgets than men" (SFI, 2018, p. 17). Following the international impact that the #Metoo-movement has had and still has, and the recent demands for a 50/50 dispersion between men and women on above-the-line positions in the film industry, gender issues have advanced to the forefront in discussions dealing with the working situation in the film and screen industries. These discussions have appeared in various national contexts in print and social media, as well as in academic work (see, e.g., Jansson et al., 2020; Liddy, 2020; Marghitu, 2018; Meziani & Cabantous, 2020; O'Brien, 2019). It has become obvious that gender inequality pervades all screen industries, large and small, and that women screen workers in different national screen contexts share similar experiences. As film and television production is becoming more and more globalized, with single productions often being the outcome a variety of regional and national industries, finances and competences, working and gendered experiences of being in the industry are also becoming increasingly globalized. Still, there are regional and local differences in how women screen workers experience their work and career situation and these need to be addressed. There are also various aspects of screen work that remain to be tended to academically. Hence, this special section offers a sample of national and local studies that all investigate how gender and equality work is done in four different contexts. It is our hope that this small sample may inspire not only more studies of national contexts, but also inspire to future cross-national studies. Before discussing how various academic fields have engaged with the screening industries in terms of work experience and representation, we wish to point out that film and television, as two available media formats reaching large and heterogeneous audiences, constitute two of the most central expressions of our time, and that both contribute to reflect and mold our understanding of society, of others – and of ourselves (de Lauretis, 1987; Dyer, 1993). Questions about who is allowed to make film and TV and what messages and images are presented and conveyed are thus politically important and imperative. The long-standing male dominance in the industry, together with the realization that images do matter, has sparked an interest in studying gender in the screen industries. The gender conditions in the film industry have attracted scholarly attention across the variety of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, and this special section is a vivid example of this cross-disciplinary scholarship. Three specific, but interrelated fields stand out when it comes to the study of gendered work and inequalities in these industries: production studies, management and life work studies, and studies of women's presence and conditions in screen work. In management studies and work life research, the early 2000s saw an increased interest in focusing and exploring the working conditions in the screening industries, alongside the growing interest for working experiences in what often referred to as the creative industries (see, e.g., Blair, 2001; Delmestri et al., 2005; Ebbers & Wijnberg, 2009; French, 2020; Jones & Pringle, 2015; Meziani & Cabantous, 2020; Soila-Wadman, 2003; Sörensen & Villadsen, 2014). This strand has also included a certain focus on how film can be used as a tool for instruction on how to exert leadership (see, e.g., Bell & Sinclair, 2016). Parallel to this development is the emergence of production studies, emanating from film and television studies. This field explores film and media as cultural practices of media production, and it does so from a variety of perspectives and with various methods. Of particular pertinence here is the sub-field of feminist production studies. This field engages in studying how "routines and rituals […], the economic and political forces […] shape roles, technologies, and the distribution of resources according to cultural and demographic differences" (Mayer et al., 2009, p. 4) in order to understand how "power operates locally through media production to reproduce social hierarchies and inequalities at the level of daily interaction" (Mayer, 2009, p. 15). One of the field's most important contributions here is the critique of the "auteurist" view that films are the "voice" of one single artist, most often the director. Instead, they argue that films are the result of collective work. Departing from this insight, production studies scholars have noted the importance of studying the work that is carried out in the margins, to question the differentiation between "creative" and "craft" professions in film making, and to pay attention to the work done "below-the-line" by workers in the film industry who are seldom credited, but without whose work films would not be produced (see, e.g., Banks, 2009, 2018; Banks et al., 2016; Mayer, 2009, 2011; Mayer et al., 2009). Alongside these two areas of research, there is a third, and more recent, strand that is dedicated to studying women's presence, analyzing policy measures targeting gender (in)equality along with studying impediments to gender equality in the film industry and women's conditions in a male dominated screening industry. This strand of research comes out of feminist media studies as a rather broad field, encompassing both the humanities and the social sciences. While research in both management studies and productions studies constitute important foundations for any research conducted on gender and screen work, for this special section, it is this third strand that is of most relevance, taken that it embraces and explores both local and the global aspects of women's conditions in the male dominated screening industries. Let us therefore shortly present this strand a bit more – and the issues it has raised – in order to give a contextualization of this special section and its four articles. Studies of women's presence in the film industry have mapped the number of women behind the camera, sometimes also including an intersectional analysis and identified gendered budget-gaps and other impediments to gender equality (Cobb, 2020; Lauzen, 2019; Liddy, 2020; Smith et al., 2013). Much of this research is conducted in the United States, discussing the conditions in a film industry that is exclusively driven by private, and most often commercial, stakeholders. In other commercially focused film centers such as Bollywood in India and Nollywood in Nigeria, women behind the screen are reported to be few and the representation of women on screen stereotypical (Mukherjee, 2018; Prakash, 2020; Ukata, 2020). In other contexts, such as Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, where there is public support for film production, gender equality is often proclaimed to be a goal. For instance, the Council of Europe (2017) declared its dedication to gender equality in film production in the so-called Sarajevo-declaration, and according to a mapping carried out by the European Audiovisual Observatory in 2019, 15 EU countries have introduced gender equality measures (EAO, 2019, p. 16). In a recent anthology collecting evidence from a number of countries, media scholar Susan Liddy concludes that while demands for gender equality has been voiced by women in all contexts, public funding institutions range from those being "gender blind… to those who theoretically commit to equality but prevaricate on the best measures to implement change to others who have introduced formal gender policies and intervention strategies" (Liddy, 2020, p. 2). Scholars have pointed to several problems with gender equality policies and reforms in the film sector: they are often vague and without a plan for implementation (Thorsen, 2020), they only reach those who are involved in projects actually funded by public means (Cobb & Williams, 2020), and they lack intersectional intention and reach (Cobb & Williams, 2020; Thorsen, 2020). Further, when reforms are implemented, problems arise because making films include a range of different stakeholders and parties, which are out of reach of government policies (Jansson, 2016), and because the film industry is entrenched with institutionalized norms and values that is difficult to change and which tend to reduce the effects of policies (Jansson, 2017; Jansson & Wallenberg, 2020). Scholars investigating women's conditions in the film industry have for a long time indicated that the way the industry is organized both formally and informally benefits white men. The sexual division of labor in the organization is manifested in women being found on positions such as script supervisors, costume designers, and make-up artists, as well as in various below-the-line positions. Many below-the-line professions are dominated by men, and the female dominated positions such as the ones mentioned above, tend to have lower status (Banks, 2009). Scholars have also noted differences in status among above-the-line professions. For instance, while male directors and scriptwriters are considered to be able to "carry" a movie, women directors and scriptwriters are not considered to do so (Bielby & Bielby, 1996, Eikhof and Cole in this issue). The trope of the male genius has been discussed as a hindrance to gender equality in several studies (see, e.g., Lantz, 2007; Marghitu, 2018; Regev, 2016; Schatz, 1988; and by Jansson et al. in this special section). Studies have also looked into how other features of the way the film industry is organized affects gender and concluded that the outcome of networking differs substantially to the favor of men (Grugulis & Stoyanova, 2012). Moreover, mothering duties limits women's possibilities in an industry where long days and extremely intense periods of work away from home are considered to be the normal procedure (Liddy, 2017; Liddy & O'Brien, 2021; O'Brien, 2015, 2019; Wing-Fai et al., 2015; Wreyford, 2013). Considering all these past (and recent) studies, there is no doubt that the screening industries – as production sites and as workplaces – are of definite interest to scholars within different disciplines. This special section aims at addressing some of the issues that recent scholarship has touched upon and tried to tackle, and it does so from four different national and cultural contexts. At the center of all four articles included in the section is the analysis of women's conditions in the screening industries, including their experiences of working and trying to get by – and of how these industries continue to foster the notion of women film workers as "oddities" in an industry that continues to uphold the idea of the genius as male. Let us now turn to the four articles included in this special section. In our first article, "The price of motherhood in the Irish film and television industries," media scholars Susan Liddy and Anne O'Brien discuss the continuous problems that surround motherhood and screen work, finding in their material evidence that there is a systemic bias against mothers, not only as women, but also as women and mothers, and that mothers have internalized the marginalization that comes from their maternal status. They have also found that many mothers adapted ways that would help them to sustain their working lives, but they were rarely supported in those adaptations by the screen production industry. In "'Almost a European, but not quite': Experiences of Female Employees in the Lithuanian Film Industry from the Postcolonial Point of View," authors Lina Kaminskaite and Jelena Salaj discuss how the women filmmakers experience their conditions in a film industry that is still marked by the transformation of Lithuania from being part of the Soviet union to becoming a country which is a member of the EU. They argue that the Lithuanian film industry is characterized by being in a postcolonial state. While the opening up of Lithuania has meant new possibilities for women film workers, it has also presented difficulties and the negotiation of new identities and new mode of film production. Doris Ruth Eikhof and Amanda Cole focus on how women are considered a risk in film production and how this leads to precarious conditions for women in the industry. In their article named, "On the basis of risk: Screen directors and gender inequality," they use the intersectional risk theory to understand how gender inequality is related to risk management practices in the screen industry. Studying two specific gender equality initiatives in the Canadian film industry, they show how risk management is gendered, and they argue that risk plays an important part in decision making in the industry. By understanding how risk is gendered, they argue, it is possible to change the processes that decides how risk is understood. The last article included in this special section departs from the much-debated aspect of film production, namely the final saying over a film's final format. In "The Final Cut," authors Maria Jansson, Frantzeska Papadopoulou, Ingrid Stigsdotter, and Louise Wallenberg discuss how the relationship between film director and producer serve to reproduce gendered relations that position the male creator and producer as norm – even in contexts where both director and producer are women. Departing from a series of interviews made with mostly women working in these two professions, the authors show how these two above-the-line professions are still governed by the malestream and that they tend to be constructed in relation to masculinity. Clearly, even in a country like Sweden, often hailed for its equality work, the gender equality measures that are undertaken are not sufficient to come to grips with gender inequalities and the male norm. Taken together the four articles shed light on different aspects of the film industry. The evidence provided from the different countries indicate that there are many similarities in the challenges that women in the film industry face. However, there are also differences depending on context. The article about Lithuania shows the importance of situating the film industry in a historical and political context. O'Brian and Liddy show in their article, the importance of understanding the specific context of how child care and the welfare state play out in order to capture women's conditions in film and television work. Eikhof and Cole's article demonstrates the necessity of applying an intersectional approach in order to also see differences in conditions between women, even if they work in the same industry and the same country. The article on Sweden, finally, looks deeper into how specific gender equality policies targeting the film industry plays out, and what problems remain, after having been implemented for almost 20 years. We believe that this special section is one step toward a deeper understanding of how gender shapes the working conditions in the film industry, and hope that it will inspire further research that takes a wider, more inclusive and possibly also more comparative grip on women screen worker's experiences and work conditions. This work was supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond under Grant no. P17-0079:1. No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors. The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and/or its supplementary materials.

Chinese Cinemas: International Perspectives examines the impact the rapid expansion of Chinese filmmaking in mainland China has had on independent and popular Chinese cinemas both in and outside of China. While the large Chinese markets are coveted by Hollywood, the commercial film industry within the People’s Republic of China has undergone rapid expansion since the 1990s. Its own production, distribution and exhibition capacities have increased exponentially in the past 20 years, producing box-office success both domestically and abroad. This volume gathers the work of a range of established scholars and newer voices on Chinese cinemas to address questions that interrogate both Chinese films and the place and space of Chinese cinemas within the contemporary global film industries, including the impact on independent filmmaking both within and outside of China; the place of Chinese cinemas produced outside of China; and the significance of new internal and external distribution and exhibition patterns on recent conceptions of Chinese cinemas. This is an ideal book for students and researchers interested in Chinese and Asian Cinema, as well as for students studying topics such as World Cinema and Asian Studies.

With the deepening of the reform of China's market economy development system and the establishment of the orientation of cultural industrialization development, China's film industry has gained unprecedented opportunities and opportunities for industrial development. At present, China has become the second largest film market in the world. Based on the pursuit of profits in the film industry, a large amount of capital has flooded into the Chinese film industry, and the scale of film investment and financing has been expanding. At the same time, the economic downturn in China and the world since the pandemic in 2020 has put great pressure on the film industry. Therefore, how to better finance film investment in the post-pandemic era has become a big problem. By literature analysis, this paper analyzes the financial investment environment of China's film industry and the development status of China's film finance, finds out the investment path and effectiveness of China's film and draws some suggestions for the future development of China's film finance.

Using the case of the Mainland Chinese film industry, this paper argues that the competing features that attract commercial capital investment and drive state centralization create a molecular structure of national film investment, or the division of investment in the film industry into several interdependent centers. A combination of regulations, institutions, the built environment and access to capital leads to a distributed investment of strategic assets linked by bonds of complementarity. Beijing dominates in the area of state-supported production. Shanghai outperforms other cities in terms of foreign direct investment. Qingdao has attracted domestic Chinese private investment and entrepreneurship. Unlike the capital agglomeration seen in countries like the United States where film investment is driven centrally by financial considerations, the Chinese national film industry is strategically divided into several centers that rely more dominantly on political or financial resources. While this paper focuses on China, understanding the molecular structure of the Chinese film industry helps us understand both developed and developing countries that are characterized by robust state oversight and strong commercial media sectors.

Chinese films are subject to excessively rigorous standards in their production processes and are required to follow certain principles as part of efforts to safeguard films, the film industry, and the public. However, this could limit the freedom of film making and artistic expression. Considering the rigid film censorship system, filmmakers have long been calling for the implementation of a rating system. Similar to academic circles in the West, there has been a significant growth in research on the Chinese film industry. There have also been academic discourses about Chinese films and film festivals (Berry and Robinson 2017) and the development of the film industry (Kokas 2017; Su 2016). Simultaneously, Chinese films have entered a golden period of development and have also become a cultural card for China to establish its image globally. However, Chinese films remain unrated, and film censorship continues to be stringent. What are the factors that make the rating of Chinese films so difficult? This study reveals the main reasons such as the outdated Chinese film censorship system and the restrictions placed on film art. In particular, the release of many world-class films in China has been facing several hurdles, while some outstanding Chinese art films have also been banned in the domestic market. Therefore, to popularize Chinese films, it is imperative to examine the censorship system of Chinese films. Accordingly, this study analyzes the necessity and feasibility of establishing a film rating system by considering many popular films that cannot be shown in China or have been excessively censored and discusses the necessity and feasibility of establishing a film.

This chapter recounts how Chinese cinema developed rapidly in the new era and how filmmakers were able to denounce the brutality of the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution. It details the beginning of China's Fifth Generation cinema as the first postwar film movement in China to place Chinese cinema on the map of world cinema. It also discusses how the late 1970s brought major transformations in the regional film cultures and industries, such as the Hong Kong International Film Festival, which was launched at the City Hall in in June 1977. The chapter refers to The Man from Hong Kong as the Australian film industry's first attempt to collaborate with its Asian counterparts in the early 1970s. It explains how the entire Filipino film industry had to struggle with the Philippines's first lady, Imelda Marcos, and her ambitious project, the First Manila International Film Festival.

Reviewed by: Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe, 1922–1938 by Huang Xuelei, and: Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979 by Zhuoyi Wang Xiangyang Cindy Chen (bio) Huang Xuelei. Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe, 1922–1938. Leiden: Brill, 2014. xvi, 381 pp. Hardback $181.00, isbn 978-90-04-27933-9. Zhuoyi Wang. Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xii, 274 pp. Hardback $95.00, isbn 978-1-137-37873-6. The lacuna of Chinese film scholarship was quickly filled with the rise of the so-called fifth generation directors, who, with their daring and iconoclastic work, have attracted fans and film critics alike. The succeeding sixth generation and the independent film movement have accelerated the study of Chinese cinema, enabling its incorporation into the curriculum of contemporary Chinese universities, with their critical social, political, and ideological agendas. In tandem with these developments, Chinese film events showcasing a director’s work or theme films have been held across many countries, eliciting enthusiastic discussion and euphoric celebration in film studies, Chinese studies, and area studies circles. The deepening and expansion of Chinese film studies have facilitated the discovery of a paucity of approaches—dominated primarily by textual analysis, the limited coverage of spans (primarily contemporary Chinese films, and the singularity of films studied), and the tendency to focus on established directors and their works or ideologically provocative films. Such proclivities cannot provide us with a [End Page 50] nuanced and comprehensive picture of Chinese cinema. A diversity of approaches has cropped up: textual analysis being complemented with contextual sources, the turn to pre-1980s or Republican-era films, the taking up of understudied period cinema, the unbiased coverage of works studied (either by period or by director), and the inclusion of good and trashy films alike as objects of study. Two recent books, Huang Xuelei’s Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe, 1922–1938 (hereafter Shanghai Filmmaking) and Zhuoyi Wang’s Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979 (hereafter Revolutionary Cycles), conform to some or all of the above-mentioned diversifying characteristics. Approaching two successive periods, respectively, they represent Shanghai filmmaking and PRC film production as starkly different cinemas with PRC filmmaking eventually succeeding in merging the two and nationalizing the film industry. By focusing on an important film company of the period, Mingxing Film Company, Huang Xuelei’s Shanghai Filmmaking traces current transnational and glocal studies to early Chinese cinema through mining the rhizomatic strands of connections film has with other forces, for instance, journalism, print, theater, and literature in their national and transnational contexts. One of the early forerunner film companies, Mingxing Film Company produced many important directors, film personnel, and major works that have had a huge impact on later Chinese filmmaking. Covering a relatively understudied period in Chinese cinema by means of a forked approach consisting of the meticulous study of the company’s production personnel and the films it produced, Shanghai Filmmaking investigates the medley “lines of flight” the important personnel have, leading to their specific propensities, particular styles, and favored themes in terms of film directors. Fleshing out Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s culture industry theory in the case of Mingxing, Huang Xuelei analyzes carefully the company’s operation, its structure, and its crucial decision makers with a cornucopia of their own connections and idiosyncrasies. Ian Jarvie’s sociological study facilitates her careful probe into the role of film through quadruple dissection—from the aspect of filmmakers, audience, the films themselves, and film reviews, for which Xuelei goes through numerous journals, newspapers, and periodicals published throughout the world. For that end, she also went out of her way to tease out the nationalistic, sensational literature, and transcultural discourses shaping the production of Mingxing films. Compared to the vernacular modernism model of early Chinese cinema with which scholars argue for cinema’s sensory impact attendant on the advent of modernity,1 Xuelei is prone to delineating the company’s everyday operation, saturated with print, media, and interpersonal relations. She eventuates in collaging a sedimented panorama of the Ming-xing Film Company in the vast maelstrom of Shanghai people’s life and...

The global film-related industry and entertainment industry have been hit hard by the epidemic. Related industries have been affected, such as film festivals and theaters. Employees suffer from unemployment, infection and work disruption. These stress will experience a long recovery period. New space for the industry is emerging. The government issued relevant measures and instructions to accelerate the recovery of the film and television industry, and enterprises joined the aid army. Government issued guidelines on resuming work in the film industry and sent money to prop up the market. Enterprises have taken active actions to help the recovery of the industry. The epidemic is expected to expand the potential online market for the film industry and have a positive impact on the future development of film and television.

The development history of the Chinese film industry can generally be divided into three stages: early cinema, policy-controlled cinema, and contemporary cinema. The Chinese cinema is an instructive story. On the one hand, it had been under the radar of the copyright law for 95 years, and its main constraints were underdeveloped technology, private capital deficiency, wartime disruption, and ideological and political concerns. On the other, contemporary Chinese film copyright has been greatly influenced by both the author’s right system and the copyright system. Despite high piracy and weak enforcement, it managed to complete a dramatic shift from a policy-controlled to market-driven and even copyright-based industry within just decades. This chapter will place the film industry under the lens of copyright, policy, and market in the context of China.