China:Through Lens

As a unique way to both artistically and objectively capture the reality in motion picture, documentaries can help improve the minds of people and the culture of a country. Documentaries provide a venue for people to know history and appreciate culture. Meanwhile, known as the "album of a country", documentaries are lens for people to gaze into the past, present, and future of their country. Therefore, countries world-wide attach great importance to the production and distributions of documentaries. Besides topic about their own country and culture, "the story of China" are featured in documentaries in different languages. Western documentaries featuring China were filmed in China, but what has been recorded is not just the reality of China but the interpretation of the reality of China. The China constructed in Western documentaries is more of "the other" in Western narrative and the representation of Western culture. Studying Western documentaries featuring China provides a new perspective to examine China's past and future.This dissertation includes five parts:Part one is Introduction, including the background and significance of the research, the research question, literature review, the definitions of relevant terms and theories, methodology, and the subject.Part two discusses the identity and spatial analysis of China. Based on the producing teams and the interaction between their identity and space, this part examines the diversity regarding the identities of producing teams.Built upon the theory of space symbol, part three discusses the how the political landscapes, economic development, and social transformations of China are represented in documentaries.Part four is about how China is presented in documentaries in traditional Western approaches with the combination of Chinese elements.Part five deals with the interaction between China and the West. With a broader perspective, this part examines the implications of the successful experience of documentaries produced jointly by China and the West.Research significance specifically:First, It is helpful for us to understand China's international cultural environment accurately. Second is helpful to find the difference between China and the West from the cultural level and self reflection.Third is the development of the current Chinese documentary has a positive reference and inspiration.This dissertation attempts to analysis documentary image is how to carry out the research and interpretation of various statements of "Chinese", explore the image record behind about culture, concept, history and power issues, that not only lies in the analysis and documentary China images are arranged, more important is to use documentary as intermediary, to help think about the differences between Chinese and Western cultures. The structure of an extremely complex dynamic relation thinking, provide reference for world class Chinese domestic documentary self reflection. For the moment to China documentary works overseas market,and international cooperation in the documentary market provides some useful experience.Because the research object and the theory and practice of not forming complexity, relevant research methods has not formed the system, coupled with the image data and the contemporary Chinese theme documentary is very large and difficult to collect, the documentary research from an intercultural perspective unavoidably subjective, there may be far fetched, some views and the analysis method in this dissertation, also need further discussion and improvement. But I sincerely hope that through the research and thinking, through the "Western eye", the concept of "China heart", discuss how to construct the contemporary image of China, spread Chinese culture, and provide advise for the future of China's local documentary in the field of international communication.