Film Studios Research Articles

Film Studio as an Institution for War Memory? “Authoritative Viewers” and the Soviet Production of Cultural Trauma (1960–1980s)

The institutional approach in memory studies implies the study of stable organizational structures responsible for the production of cultural memory. Addressing the problem of late-Soviet institutions of memory of the Great Patriotic War in the 1960s-1980s, the author considers the film studio, using “Lenfilm” as an example, as a special institution of memory and cultural trauma of the war. Based on institutional sources (script files, artistic councils, etc.), the author proposes to study the production of Soviet films about the war as the interaction of a complex system of conflicting “authoritative viewers” who had (relative) autonomy, functions, and a different type of authority in judging the past – the “power of memory». The author substantiates a typology of such “memory power” (“author power”, “studio power”, “power of the cultural bureaucracy”, “party power”, “military power”, “corporate power”, and “media power”) and summarizes the main properties inherent in the system of cultural production that influenced the film memory of the war in the “long 1970s” – its stability, “institutional opacity”, “constant bargaining”, overlapping party-bureaucratic control, contestation and defense of the “autonomy of the author”.

S. M. Eisenstein and Disciple: The Anti-Religious Novel “Kajana” by K. K. Pipinashvili

The article talks about the creation by the director Konstantin Konstantinovich Pipinashvili of his first film “Kajana” (1941). In 1932, Pipinashvili entered the workers’ faculty of the State Institute of Cinematography (GIK), graduated from it in 1936 and decided to make a film based on the story of the classic of Georgian literature N. Lomouri. In the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), documents were found that were not previously published, which shed light on the relationship of Pipinashvili with his teacher S. M. Eisenstein. It was possible to find out that strong friendly relations arose between them, it was planned that Pipinashvili’s film “Kajana” would be the preface to the film “Bezhin Meadow”. However, the prohibition of the latter and the persecution of Eisenstein did not allow these plans to come true — the filming of Kazhdana was stopped, despite all the efforts of the young director. himself Pipinashvili after graduating from the GIK, arrives at the Tbilisi film studio and tries to re-launch the film “Kajana” into film production. The film studio went to meet Pipinashvili, a full-length film was shot, which was released in Georgian and Russian in May 1941. We found a transcript of the discussion of the film “Kajana” in the Cinema House. This document shows how the figure of Eisenstein was perceived in the early 1940s, how anti-religious cinematography was treated at that time, how the problem of formalism was touched upon. We also see how the official goal differs from the artist’s idea. In the letters of Konstantin Konstantinovich it is clear to Pipinashvili that he is aimed at co-creation, he is captured by the ideas of the teacher. In the documents, we see what film functionaries want: “Kajana” as a pedagogical anti-religious story about the dangers of superstition and the bright future of the Georgian people. Pipinashvili managed to preserve his own style and national flavor. The composition, thoughtfulness of shots, the use of light and shadow, editing — all this is under the influence of Eisenstein.

ШУХЛЯДИ І СТРУНИ (химерно-єретичний есей)

With this essay, I continue the long-standing heretical polemic with the practice of literary generalizations, which drive the artistic achievements of unique creative people into the drawers of "-isms", uniting them with one or another precedent name, such as "fancy prose" or "fancy novel". Vasyl Zemliak's diverse work does not fit only in these drawers, because he wrote not only epic or lyrical prose, but also prose poetry (it is denoted by as many as four incorrect terms: "prose poems", "prose poems", "prose poetry", " prose poetry"), and also worked in the field of related arts, participating in the creation of film scripts, and some of them (such as "Conscience") do not at all fit into the "quaint" commune. For example, the work "Dialogue with the city" is traditionally classified as "small stories", while in fact it is a prose-lyrical monologue-message in the form of a dialogue, with elements of an ode, meditation, memory, urban landscape and with a rhythmic melody, tropes, rhetorical figures, etc. corresponding to this genre. The essay also includes a comic strip by V. Zemliak's, which was preserved in the archive of the film director and writer M. Mashchenko and was published in his memoirs, posthumously. Written in 1960, this comic belongs to the period of the socalled Khrushchev thaw, but even then it was dangerous for the author, who worked as the chief editor of the film studio named after O. Dovzhenko (1963−1968). However, after the events of the "Prague Spring" in 1968, Vaclav Vacek, a Czech by origin, who took the pseudonym Vasyl Zemlіak, no longer worked at a film studio. I also support my long-standing statement about the need to finally introduce film dramaturgy, just as dramaturgy was introduced, to artistic literature, and its analysis to literary studies as a branch of art studies. And therefore − about the need to explore the creativity of artists in view of their diverse interests, in particular in the genre of film scripts. The world has long been moving towards a new syncretism of the arts, in which the art of the word and its visualization should occupy a prominent place. Not seeing all this is, at best, narrow-minded myopia.

Общие положения об авторском праве в системе права интеллектуальной собственности в России и за рубежом

The author examines the intellectual property system and gives general theoretical overview of copyright, its status in the Russian law and from an international perspective. Intellectual property is an important asset for industrial, medical, information and nanotechnology enterprises, and a key (or even major) asset for creative companies such as film studios, art galleries, theaters, and animation studios. If in the first case we refer more to industrial property, the second case touches upon copyright. In order to effectively use, protect and defend such asset as products of creativity, we need to thoroughly understand its mechanisms. Purpose. The purpose of the study is to compile and systematize knowledge in the field of intellectual property law, in particular, concerning the place of copyright in the intellectual property system. The author intends to make an overview on copyright, considering all its aspects: exclusive rights, moral and “other” rights. Methodology. While conducting the present research, the authors used bothgeneral scientific and private law methods, such as: the comparative legal method, the method of interpreting legal norms, the formal legal method, the method of comprehensive analysis of legislation and the method of structural analysis. Results. Based on the results of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that copyright and related rights tend to be an important institution of intellectual property law, along with industrial property law. Comparing the copyright in Russia with similar institutions of foreign countries, the author reveals the tendency of “realification” of intellectual property in Anglo-American law, which is fundamentally opposite to the meaning that the Romano-Germanic legal family endows with this institution. In addition, the author reveals the concept of “other” rights, which exists only in Russia, and eligibility criteria for copyright protection in a comparative legal aspect. Conclusion. The study is of a practical and theoretical nature: the author, on the one hand, provides overview of copyright and related rights in the intellectual property system in Russian and foreign legislation, on the other hand, focuses on examples from legal practice that allows to use the information in practical activities. This study lays the groundwork for a more detailed consideration of “other” rights, in particular, the right to author's reward.

КИНЕМАТОГРАФ УКРАИНЫ В ПОСТСОВЕТСКИЙ ПЕРИОД: ЭТАПЫ РАЗВИТИЯ, ХАРАКТЕР И ОСОБЕННОСТИ

Cinema as a socio-cultural institution reflects the cultural and ideological trends in society and has a huge impact on the formation of people’s self-awareness. The history of cinema in Ukraine has more than 100 years. At one time, Soviet films produced by the A. Dovzhenko Film Studio and the Odessa Film Studio enjoyed All-Union popularity and often fell into the ranks of the leaders of the Soviet film distribution. The post-Soviet cinema of Ukraine represents a separate and special stage in the development of Ukrainian cinema. And the article is concerned with its consideration. It reveals periodization in its formation and development. It also shows that the process of manipulating the consciousness of Ukrainian society through the art cinematography began almost immediately after the collapse of the USSR. At the same time, given that it is impossible to determine the directions of development of modern Ukrainian cinema without knowing and taking into account the experience of its Soviet heritage, an attempt is made to briefly digress into the history of pre-revolutionary and Soviet cinema. One of the conclusions of the article is that the introduction and spread of nationalist ideology in post-Soviet Ukraine was actively going on, including with the help of cinema, which at the same time formed alienation and rejection of the Soviet past through its widespread discrediting. A number of films are given as a kind of reference points that reflect the phenomenon of post-Soviet Ukrainian cinema, accompanied by an analysis of the impact of their perception on the masses.

Кино, Толстой и черносотенцы

The article analyzes the history of the distribution of the cinematographic chronicle of Leo Tolstoy's farewell in 1910 in various cities of the Russian Empire. Film censorship in late imperial Russia proceeded from the circulars of the Holy Synod and was guided by the considerations of local authorities. Many films which were censored in Moscow (where the major film studios were concentrated) were blocked by local governors and police authorities. Both feature and documentary films of foreign and domestic origin were banned. Locations of cinemas, duration of screenings, and permissions to show movies during the Lent were controlled by the church. The funeral of the excommunicated writer was not held according to the Orthodox rite, filming was carried out by several film companies (Pate, A. Khanzhonkov, A. Drankov) and in a number of cities the screening of newsreels was prohibited. At the same time, in most places of the Russian Empire, cinematic screenings of Leo Tolstoy's funeral were held, causing a great public response. The article reveals why censorship in different places of the Russian Empire depended on the orders of local administrations, how the authorities in the provinces dealt with the demonstration of newsreels of the farewell to the writer, what was the reaction of the 'plebeian' society, what kind of film initiatives were available from the Black Hundred organizations, and a special case of demonstrating the Tolstoy-related program in Perm is also considered. The analysis of the film press, provincial newspapers and documents of the Perm archives leads to the conclusion that the films about Leo Tolstoy, which were sensational for film studios, distributors and exhibitors, allowed for release by the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, have caused alarm and resistance from local authorities. At the same time, the Tolstoy Days were an important event not only for the capital, but also for provincial, district towns, for various social and textual communities. The Days in memory of the writer, organized by cinematic theaters, were an indicator of civic solidarity in the Russian society in the late imperial period.

At the Turning Point of Historical Eras: Metamorphoses of the Ural Cinema

The study is based on the historical transformations of the Sverdlovsk Film Studio and the analysis of the period of its highest heyday. Created as a project of Stalin’s cultural policy in accordance with the Order of the Committee for Cinematography Affairs under the USSR Council of People’s Commissars on February 9, 1943, the film studio has experienced a lot: the process of its formation and adaptation in the artistic culture of the Urals, the period of “low-cartography”, the period of creative take-off in the 1960s — 1980s, and even the state of “clinical death”. Revealing the paradoxes of its development, the author defines the ideological, artistic, thematic and aesthetic traditions that distinguish the creative potential of the Ural cinema from the films of other domestic studios. The 80th anniversary of the Sverdlovsk Film Studio is a date that makes it possible to comprehend the path that the Ural cinematography took, which in its heyday really competed with both Mosfilm and Lenfilm, enriching the cultural life not only on the regional, but also on the national level.

ВАСИЛЬ ЗЕМЛЯК І ЛІТЕРАТУРНО-МИСТЕЦЬКИЙ ПОБУТ КИЄВА 1960–70-х РОКІВ

The situation in literature, art, culture in general, in Ukraine and the world, calls for the development of a new categorical apparatus, analytical tools that will allow a deeper understanding of the nature of modern cultural transformations. Those, in particular, which caused a significant disconnect between the author and his audience, the leveling of the institution of literary and artistic criticism, new forms of social control over the artist’s behavior. Literary, and at the same time, artistic everyday life as a factor of cultural development began to be understood in the 1920s, when there were quite radical changes in the ways of functioning of literature and art and their correlation with non-artistic factors. Now, a hundred years later, the processes of that time are of particular interest. The reason is in many respects a similar process of restructuring socio-cultural institutions, the very relations of the writer and the artist with their audience. This explains the formation of the concept of “literary everyday life” (Boris Eichenbaum, Yuriy Tynianov) and its use as an important tool in the analysis of literary and artistic processes. Vasyl Zemliak is one of the most prominent figures in the literature and cinema of the 1960s and 70s. In that period, writers willingly worked in the cinema. There are many reasons to talk about the film studios of that time as an institution that should be considered in the category of literary and artistic life. Because we are not talking about a factory complex, but about the sphere of creative living, a domestic environment that is not formalized in any way. Other such institutions were creative unions (primarily writers and cinematographers), publishing houses and editors of literary newspapers and magazines.

I Want to be on the Side of the Messy Orange : Interview with Tom McCarthy

Tom McCarthy’s fifth novel, The Making of Incarnation, delves into the field of time-and-motion studies, and it begins by focusing on one of its chief proponents, Lillian Gilbreth. McCarthy fictionalizes the American psychologist’s life and work by arranging a global chase around an artefact from Gilbreth’s personal archive: “Box 808”, a doll-house-sized motion model that would, according to Gilbreth’s notes, “change everything” in her field and beyond. A fascinating cast of characters goes on the hunt for Box 808, which several interested parties, from industry to shady secret services, are eager to get their hands on. Quickly cutting between several characters and settings, McCarthy’s novel follows professionals in the contemporary motion capture industry, as they pursue the potentials and pitfalls of their trade. One of them, Mark Phocan, is busy performing all sorts of motion capture tasks for Pantarey, the company that employs him. In one of the most meaningful – and most sublime – scenes of the novel, he visits a wind tunnel in the Netherlands and witnesses a simulation of an Austrian bob sleigh run. Phocan will ultimately do most of the detective work to uncover the mysteries of Box 808. While the novel surveys and deconstructs the captivating technological, social, emotional, and political dimensions of motion capture and how it seemingly reaches into every aspect of contemporary life, the book also explores the dealings of a fictional film studio that enlists motion capture engineers to aid with the special effects for their blockbuster space opera Incarnation. In our conversation in April 2023, we delved into the history of time-and-motion studies, the theoretical underpinnings of McCarthy’s work, as well as the capabilities and prospects of the contemporary novel.

Genre Solutions in Contemporary Popular Science Cinema. Experience of Practical Application

The article studies the current situation in Russian popular science cinema, as well as its essence as a separate type of cinema with its own genre system, different from documentary film, television and television journalism genres. The authors consider such famous researchers points of view on the genre problem as G. Pospelov, G. Abramovich, L. Timofeev, V. Kozhinov, G. Gachev, V. Poznin, G. Prozhiko, N. Zorkaya, and offer their opinion concerning the differentiation of the concepts “types” and “genres” in relation to popular science cinema. The problem of its future existence is characterized considering the modern viewer being attracted by entertainment, mysticism and pseudoscience, as well as limited funding and the disappearance of popular science or educational film studios in Russia. Solutions to the problem are mentioned among which are, in particular, activities of the “Scientific Film Laboratory 2.0” are described, within which films are created that present scientific agenda to the viewer with the help of clear use of genre. During the study, methods of participant observation, analysis and synthesis were used.

Teaching virtual production: the challenges of developing a formal curriculum

In this article, we explore how the recent proliferation of the virtual production stage with its promise of real-time visual effects has not only changed the working environment of the film studio, but also introduced an urgent need for new training and teaching approaches – not only for current and future film students, but also for educators and practitioners. This case study examines a research project involving students from Ravensbourne University London, UK, in collaboration with industry partner Mo-Sys Engineering, a leading manufacturer of virtual production solutions. The complex demands of new, multidisciplinary job roles in virtual production have created a skills shortage in the UK film and television industry. We illustrate the challenges of training not only film students but also educators for a continually changing workplace dominated by disruptive technologies and shifting skill sets.

Shaping OTT Movie Consumption through Immersive Cinema: A Qualitative Investigation of Consumer Perspectives

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the entertainment sector saw a worldwide disruption with restrictions on outdoor activities. Consequently, consumers turned towards video and music streaming services for their entertainment consumption. Several film studios have taken the digital release route on over-the-top (OTT) sites to avoid revenue losses and indefinite delays. However, these non-theatrical OTT film releases need to experiment with different strategies to bring the experiences to par with theatrical ones. This exploratory study aims to provide insights on whether Immersive Cinema can be used to imitate the physical world through digital simulation on OTT platforms to gain credibility in a competitive entertainment market. We conducted semi-structured, qualitative interviews with 21 consumers and Focus Group Discussions with 14 MBA students to understand perspectives about Immersive Cinema consumption on OTT platforms and its potential when compared to traditional theatrical releases. Using the findings of this study, OTT platforms can curate their new films as a direct alternative to theatrical releases.

Is It Gender or Is It Race? To Kill a Mockingbird and Its Film Adaptation

This article begins by exploring the national climate in which Lee’s novel appeared, at the height of the civil rights movement in the South, which had a crucial impact on its composition and reception. The major film studios were not initially interested in the novel, but independent filmmakers Alan Pakula (producer) and Robert Mulligan (director), influenced by existentialism, felt attracted to stories with strong dramatization over the spectacular. The film is famously characterized by the voice-over narration of the adult Scout, which embodies a paradoxical duality of perspective: the events are seen from the perspective of the young Scout but described in the language of a mature and articulate adult Scout. In the novel, the destabilization of gender norms is the central theme, and the protagonist is clearly Scout going through the pains of growing up female in a South with very strict definitions of gender roles. This dimension is not prominent in the film version, which gave in to the demands of the Hollywood star system and made the girl’s father, played by Gregory Peck, the main character, and made racism the main issue. The article concludes with a necessary reconsideration of Atticus Finch, subjected in recent years to the complaint that both the novel and the film convey the historically inaccurate message that heroic whites, instead of blacks, were the leaders of the anti-racist movements of the twentieth century. Atticus Finch no doubt remains tied to the accommodating values of his class and he never openly questions the structural racism of which he himself is part, but moral horizons of previous eras are often narrow in comparison with our own, and we should avoid the excesses of presentism and maintain the historical perspective that allows us to celebrate the courage and success of fictional white liberals like Atticus and real ones like Harper Lee herself, who could only speak as whites, not as black victims. Despite all its limitations, Mockingbird did contribute to making hearts and minds reconsider race in America, and it remains a socially and historically important film. Thus, we should at least acknowledge its merit in taking a stand during a period when many films avoided controversial racial matters.

Kierunek Wschód. Kulisy realizacji filmu "Mamo, czy kury potrafią mówić?"

The author analyses the first, unsuccessful Polish-Belarusian co-production of the Semafor Film Studio – "Mamo, czy kury potrafią mówić?". The project, which was initially planned as another, simple in terms of complexity of the studio’s film production, became one of the studio’s largest and most demanding projects. The researcher tries to shed some light on what the reasons behind this decision were. Using archive data and information obtained in the process of conducting in-depth interviews with former employees of Semafor, he places the studio in the broader landscape of film production, and indicates what factors determined the final failure of the project as a co-production with the Belarusians.

ACTUAL WAYS OF USING FILM STUDIO SPACES WITH CONSIDERATION OF THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE WITH REDUCED MOBILITY AND THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED

Problem statement. As of 2022, there are two large film studios in Ukraine, created in the first half of the 20th century − Odesa film studio and the one in Kyiv named after O. Dovzhenka. At the time of construction, they were located outside the city, however, as of 2022, as a result of the organic urban development of the cities, studios found themselves practically in the centers of the cities. Therefore, in the central areas of cities there are objects with historical heritage, green zones, which, however, have limited access for citizens, and especially for groups with reduced mobility. The purpose of the article. The main goal of the work is to determine the actual ways of using film studio spaces, taking into account groups of the population with limited mobility and people with visual impairments. The task of the research is to analyze the activity of film studios in the structure of the city and to identify and classify methods of adapting spaces to a more relevant use of complexes and territories in order to activate them in the urban environment. Conclusions. The Boards of the state film studios of Ukraine are trying to independently update the functional content of their studios. However, the majority of such modernization cases are rather chaotic in their nature. Therefore, there is a need to develop a holistic strategy of functional actualization for each state film studio, taking into account its content, location in the city structure, and functional environment. This will make it possible to transform passive closed production zones in the central areas of cities into partially open active recreational and creative spaces and urban cultural nodes.

Materializing the digital landscape: the cinema–ecology complex and Chinese fantasy media

AbstractContemporary cinema and media studies are marked by a materialist turn that highlights material elements, such as objects, non-human agencies, the environment and places on and off screen, as well as the materiality of media productions and consumption. This article expands on the important scholarship of “materialist” media studies as well as existing ecocinema scholarship by stressing the materiality of digital landscapes in contemporary Chinese fantasy (or qihuan and xuanhuan) film and television works that have gained significant popularity in China and Hong Kong. Specifically, this article examines the animist landscape in film and television adaptions of Eternal Love, a fantasy romance television serial that loosely draws on Daoist mythology. Focusing on the material aspects of digital landscapes of Chinese fantasy cinema, the article develops the notion of the “cinema–ecology complex” to address the materiality of digital landscapes, the cinematic footprint of digitally enhanced landscapes through location shooting and the consumption of landscapes as scenic spots, including daka practices, in film studio cities and related film-induced tourism. Ultimately, this article calls for a textual–infrastructural approach in cinema and media studies, which tends to reorient to the infrastructural aspects of media production, distribution and consumption.

HISTORY IN THE FILMS OF JĀNIS STREIČS

The creative biography of the film director Jānis Streičs includes 22 feature films, 13 of which are devoted to the present day and nine are about the past. From among historical films, one depicts Latvia at the turn of the 19th century, another focuses on the Russian Civil War, two deal with the inter-war period, three depict World War II, and two are about the 1940s. These films offer Streičs’ views about the past, his own interpretation of the texts of history. At the same time, events, people, environments and life situations of the past are viewed from the present-day perspective, which includes issues and values from the present day within the space of the past. This paper examines two films made by Jānis Streičs during the Soviet era, both of them focusing on Latvian history – “The Boys of Līvsala” (1969) and “Strange Passions” (1983), and both of them are set in 1946. The films are different because of the 14 years that passed between the production of the first one and the second one, but they differ even more by the way in which the director sends messages about the past, also displaying his relationship to history and regimes. “Strange Passions” is a challenging film in terms of the history of cinema and the Soviet occupation of Latvia, bringing up the question of whether such a film could have been produced and shown in cinemas and on television. The era that is reflected in the two films is part of Jānis Streičs’ own biography. He was a child in 1946, and there was a great deal of tragedy caused by the Soviet regime, its cultivated violence, and the lack of value for human lives. The paper reviews the history interpretation in these films, and the research is based on documents from the Riga Film Studios materials that are stored at the Latvian State Archives. The conclusion is that “The Boys of Līvsala” and “Strange Passions” provide brilliant evidence of the director’s “magical realist” style. They demonstrate his great skill in transforming the childhood and youth period of his generation into a part of Latvia’s cultural memory.

DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS’ ANTI-COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. THE FILM “KULDĪGA FRESCOES” (AIVARS FREIMANIS, 1966)

In his book The Communist Post Scriptum, philosopher Boris Groys defines communism as a revolutionary project, the aim of which was to subordinate the economy to politics and to transform society from a financial medium into a lin- guistic medium. In order to achieve communism, it was first necessary to verbalise society. At the beginning of the 1960s, efforts by Riga poetic documentary film- makers to work in the cinéma vérité style failed because the Soviet people, having experienced a linguistic turn, clearly knew what to say and how to speak when approached by film cameras. It was one of the reasons why part of Soviet film- makers started avoiding the spoken word in cinema in the hope of approaching truth solely through image. In the middle of the 1960s, there were two monumental documentaries created at Riga Film Studios that were entirely based on the dramatic expressivity of image: 235,000,000 (1967) by Uldis Brauns and “Kuldīga Frescoes” (Kuldīgas freskas, 1966) by Aivars Freimanis. However, I believe that the films went in opposite directions. The epic documentary 235,000,000, which was dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the USSR, actually offered an equivalent visual expression to the leading Soviet linguistic discourse, whereas “Kuldīga Frescoes” liberated visual aesthetics from the shackles of political language, “taking it to another horizon where it becomes free, a new creature in nation humanity” (Rainis). The topic of my paper will be “Kuldīga Frescoes”.

TOWARDS SOCIAL CINEMA: EXTENDING OF RIGA POETIC STYLE IN THE 1970s

In the 1960s, a group of young and very gifted documentary filmmakers established themselves at Riga Film Studio and developed a poetic style, based on visual metaphors which they named themselves as Riga Style but later in the Soviet and East European context the style and its creators came to be known as Riga Poetic Documentary Film School. Yet in the 1970s one can identify pronounced focusing by the documentary filmmakers on social issues, the aspirations to offer in their films analysis of the problems existing in the society and sometimes offering their solution without losing the artistic qualities of the films. The article written in 1971 by Armīns Lejiņš, the script writer and theorist of the poetic cinema, “Poetic Cinema + Scientific Cinema = Social Cinema” can be perceived as their manifesto. Lejiņš was convinced that by combining poetry and science, Riga documentary filmmakers could facilitate henceforth logical, analytical and dialectical thinking culture in their films. Within the framework of my article, I’ll provide a broader insight into the social angle of films by Latvian documentary filmmakers, into their thematic and aesthetic aspects, and also offer a more detailed analysis of the film “The Woman We Expect?” (Sieviete, kuru gaida?, 1978) – the concept, the process of its making, relations with censorship and its reception.

Beyond Labourer’s Love: Rethinking Early Chinese Film Comedy

Abstract This article examines three lost short comedies produced alongside Labourer’s Love by the Mingxing Film Studio in 1922: The King of Comedy Visits Shanghai (Huaji dawang you hu ji), Havoc in a Bizarre Theatre (Danao guai xichang), and The Naughty Kid (Wantong). I propose to look beyond the extant Labourer’s Love and instead to delve into the broader intertextual, intermedial fabric of early film comedy for a re-evaluation of this neglected genre. Drawing on advertising texts, stills, and film reviews, this study corrects misinformation and supplements new data, based on which I posit two notions for a reconceptualization of early Chinese comedy film. First, I propose the Chinese concept of renao (“hot noise”) as a particular sensorial-somatic mode of experience to account for the Chinese engagement with film comedy in the tumultuous 1920s. Second, I borrow the Chinese poetic device of allusion to interpret their widespread references to Hollywood films in structural, narrative, and visual terms. Through the prism of allusion, the appropriation and re-production of Hollywood elements can be regarded as a means of adding authority to inchoate Chinese filmmaking, while at the same time complicating familiar topoi, symbols, and imageries in culturally sensitive ways.