| The international publicity film for city image is one of the mostwell-known and useful ways for cities to promote outside the country. Ithas experienced a process from weak to strong, from “being spread” to“actively disseminate to the world”. It’s a way for people outside the cityto cognitively learn and know about the city, and also a way for peopleinside to build a cultural identity and social identity.This article will analyze several international publicity films ofChinese cities from two perspectives, Visual-culture Communication andCross-cultural Communication. One the one side, a semiotic approachcombing syntagmatic and paradigmatic, denotation and connation is usedto analyze the image symbols in the international publicity films. One theother side, some concepts from cross-cultural communication will be usedto rationalize choices, purposes and significance of various symbols. Onlyin this way will we understand whether there is a deviation between cities’subjective intent and the objective dissemination effects of those films.The paper includes five chapters and a conclusion. In chapter one,you can learn the background and research methods of this survey. Inchapter two, theory relative to the research is discussed. Using analyticalmethods in visual culture, chapter three reveals the differences of socialmood the propaganda films have created through a deep analysis of filmsin Chengdu, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Special themes like urban landscape,rural folklore culture, children, youth and olds are the mostly used visualrepresentations. In the context of globalization, mass media couldinfluence the understanding about a city through encoding of visual symbols. Meanwhile, the propaganda films for Chinese city image thatplayed home and abroad are entirely two differently styles. Theinternational publicity film uses a way of mixing elite and mass culture,civic and official discourses to flatter western audiences. |
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