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Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the reasons why three Cultural Revolution texts were banned by Chinese censors. The dissertation is presented in three chapters. The first chapter provides a historical overview of the film industry and censorship in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from the 1940s to the 1970s, revealing the demands placed on filmmakers to produce works that were ideologically in line with Party policy, this includes examples of censored films and Socialist realist cinema. The second chapter provides a historical overview of the post-Cultural Revolution landscape in China’s film industry; revealing the slackening and tightening of censorship policy to fit Party policy, the proliferation of “Scar” films and the rise of the Fifth Generation filmmakers to worldwide recognition. The third and final chapter provides three case studies of Cultural Revolution texts produced in the 1990s. Each case study provides a production context showing the difficulties the filmmakers faced in getting their films made; and a discussion of each film's reception domestically and internationally and their lasting legacies in China’s film industry. The case studies will also provide textual analyses of the film texts, to reveal how the directors' personal histories influenced their films and to determine what themes and historical representations were considered subversive by the Chinese censors. These case studies reveal that the reception these films received had dramatic consequences on the Chinese film industry, and led to an increase in censorship of representations of the Cultural Revolution and Communist Party Policy since 1949, and ultimately a suppression of China’s history and collective memory

Course: Film Studies - BA (Hons) - C1256

Date Deposited: 2024-08-08

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14425.html