A Different Way Of History Writing

Based on new histoncist theories, this thesis is a study of the movies of Chinese mainland from the 1980 trying to explore the forms of movie texts presented in the process of narrating history and the circulation between movies and their relative social factors. Combining general description with analysis on cases, the thesis tries to achieve a comprehensive and profound understanding of the movies in this period.The thesis is composed of three parts: the introduction, the body and the conclusion. After a brief introduction of the relative New Historicist theories, the introduction part makes a survey of the past studies on this subject and points out the significance and feasibility of the paper. The body is divided further into two parts. The former part discusses the forms of movies from three aspects, classifying them into the following types based on the unique classification of movie works by generation in China. They are the following tendencies as the poetic representation of history by the directors of the fourth generation, allegorical presentation of history by the fifth generation and individualized presentation of history by the sixth generation. The latter part of the body thoroughly analyzes the three types of movies from the aspects of the cause of formation and value orientation. In the discussion of the cause of formation of the movie forms, the paper tries to reveal from "the hidden places of negotiation and exchange" how the history has fashioned the movies into the present forms by analyzing the movies' historical context at the time of their production. The section on the value orientation of the movies discusses their radical or conservative tendency as well as both radical and conservative tendency based on the analysis of specific movies. The conclusion points out that the movies of Chinese mainland inthis period write the history in a different way in comparison with the Chinese traditional historical ideas.In the movies of Chinese mainland from the 1980, there is a complex crisscross pattern of the arrangements of all kinds of powers and profits. With the application of the New Historicist theories, we might be able to touch a different kind of history by reading the selectively reserved and altered movie texts in the oscillation of all kinds of discourses.