Film History On Paper: Stories, Propaganda And Controversy

The desolation of the video materials and written history about film seriously restricted its research.Due to the long period of social unrest,most of the films produced in China before 1949 have been out of sight.All that we can do is to know much more about its history.The only means to do this is to retrospect the history and piece together its’ ’parts’ ’ scattered in the course of history.Film journals and magazines in Republic of China era can be references for us to verify what exactly happened in the course of the film development,which is of great value to the research of the early films."Watching movies on paper" has become one of the effective ways to study early Chinese films.With the slightly yellow-colored books in the libraries,we can recall and trace back to its history and review it awe-inspiringly.Otherwise,it will vanish like a bust of smoke.1933 witnessed the development of the film and was honored as the ’ Chinese Film Year’’.In this year,there was a fierce debate in the film industry about the soft film theory and the hard film theory.But the film,the love story of the yao nationality aimed high and wanted to make some innovations in the film industry to distinguish itself from domestic films.It was themed with ’’interracial civilizing’’ and filmed in the YaoShan city,XinJiang Uygur Autonomous Region,which exists as the third dimension,neither a rural nor an urban area in the film.But due to all kinds of complicated reasons,it became one of the neglected films in the history and there were little reviews and comments on it in the discourse of the film history.In fact,the film can reflect the rich cultural connotations and social features of its age from the perspective of "YaoShan" or the "love story".As Gilles Deleuze said about Foke,’’ you just lay emphasis on statements rather than the written materials consisting of the topics and sentences that means a lot to the filers.The writer made attempts to get rid of the highly ideologicalized historical concepts of social politics and the assumption prejudiced by the first impression and return to 1930 s when the left-wing films dominate the market,restoring the original look of the film the love story of YaoShan.The purpose of the the article is to make the value of the love story of YaoShan presents itself before us and be recognized through the piecing,sorting out of the documents.The film history on paper is one of the ways to present the features of the film from the three dimensions of story,propaganda and controversy of the film through sorting out the precious historical materials like movie newspapers,magazines,local records and photos.Thus to objectively recognize the unique position of the film in the golden age of Chinese film,and consider its unique significance in the early Chinese film history.The article is mainly to solve the issue of why Guangxi Province,under the rule of the Republic of China,producing such a film describing the alien races who go into barbarous land and live there,and why the ethnic minority films flaunting to pioneer in the film industry is criticized and even its pioneering significance in the early film history and culture was neglected.With the feedback from the audience and the analysis on the film,we can see the epitome of the films in the 1930 s and having a rough understanding about the policies of “interracial civilizing” and “unifying the frontier”.We can also capture the impressions and reviews of film critics and audiences about this kind of film and reveal its meaning to be as a barbarous adventure film.The thesis is divided into five parts.The first part is introduction which mainly involves in the settings of the topic,the reasons,and the classification of the concepts.The second part is the story involved in the basic information of the film including the specific sorting about the anecdotes,archetype of the story,the real incidents and film reviews.The third part is propaganda.The high-file show and the earnest propaganda from the producer became a real sensation at that time.The fourth part is controversy.After the film was on show,the discussion about the content of the film from Luxun,Huangjiamo and Linghe was also emerged on magazines,such as the theme of the film,photographing object,the performance,the story of the filming,the archetype of the story and the theme of interracial civilizing,and also they made some explanations about the film,which is a rarely conceptual separation.The last part is the analysis on historical values of the film,the discussion of the value of the film and the conclusion based on these that it is worth watching due to its diversity in the culture: filming anecdotes interspersed with the story of Han and Yao along story;the elements fit for frontier fever;erotic elements with the shadow of commercial films;the original theme of interracial civilizing;the novelty of recording the life of ethnic minorities.Its show stired a heated debate in the art field,some of whom hold a positive attitude towards it and others hold the opposite;it also arouse the eloquence of intellectuals in the 1930 s.It can be treated as an ethnography film and be of a lot of significance to the development of the film.