The Industry Crisis during the Golden Age: Re-examining the History of Chinese Film in the1930s
Ji’an Lin
Lin will introduce his new book Projecting the Times: The History of Film Exhibition in China, 1897—1949 (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2024) and focus on a key chapter that reconsiders the history of Chinese cinema in the 1930s from an industrial perspective. Drawing on extensive archival research, Lin offers a critical re-examination of this pivotal decade, which has traditionally been celebrated in Chinese film historiography as the “golden age” of Chinese cinema. While the 1930s are often associated with a flourishing of cinematic artistry, the film industry itself was undergoing an increasingly severe crisis during this period. By the mid-1930s, the industry had entered a phase of notable stagnation and decline. This downturn was driven by a range of interrelated factors: a deepening domestic economic recession, heavy government taxation, escalating Japanese military aggression, the contraction of overseas markets (particularly in Southeast Asia), and intensifying competition from foreign films. By shifting the focus from art to industry, Lin reveals the contradictions behind this so-called Golden Age and calls for a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese cinema in this era.
Lecture 2
Behind Pema Tseden: A New Generation of Chinese Tibetan Filmmakers in Amdo Region
Yijun Li
The deceased writer and film director Pema Tseden is regarded as an epoch-making personage for founding the ‘New Wave of Tibetan Film’. The ‘Wave’ does not subside after Pema’s passing. In recent years, young filmmakers emerged from the grassland of his hometown: Chinese Amdo Tibetan Region. This talk will focus on these young Tibetan filmmakers. With the methodology of ethnographic survey and text analysis, Yijun Li’s research is to describe their general characteristics, explore the ways, purposes and situations of their filmmaking, and analyze the principles, features and implications of their works. On this basis, it aims to reveal the role of these Chinese Tibetan youths and their works in China’s existing cultural structure and art industry system. It argues that activities of these Tibetan youths are distinct from the so-called “cultural activism” and “the activist imaginary”, which are used to define the cultural practices of indigenous people in North America and Australia.
About the Speakers
Ji'an Lin received his Ph.D. in cinema studies from the Communication University of China in 2017. During the 2016–2017 academic year, he was a joint doctoral student at the University of California, Davis. After graduation, he joined the School of Journalism and Communication at Central China Normal University in 2017 and was promoted to associate professor in 2020. He is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on the history of Chinese cinema and the sociology of film. He is the author of 映演时代：中国电影放映史（1897–1949） (Projecting the Times: A History of Film Exhibition in China, 1897–1949, China Social Sciences Press, 2024). His work has appeared in leading Chinese and international journals, including the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Dianying Yishu (Film Art), and Dangdai Dianying (Contemporary Cinema).
Yijun Li is an associate professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and is currently a visiting scholar at University of Washington as . Her research focuses on films about/ by Chinese ethnic minority groups, with particular attention to a new generation of Tibetan filmmakers. She also examines the physical and emotional conditions of human beings in the context of contemporary media technologies. She is the Chinese translator of books by philosopher Vilém Flusser: Into the Universe of Technical Images and Post-history.
