The freedom to succeed or to fail : humanism in new era Chinese cinema
Date
1995
Authors
Gallant, Maurice Elmer
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Abstract
From 1979 to 1989, the film industry in the People's Republic of China enjoyed unprecedented creative freedom. In this ten year period, which has become known as the New Era, film artists were allowed to explore themes and content beyond the realm of political ideology. But, the New Era was not a discrete period and owed a debt to past cultural and political history. For this reason, we will analyze Chinese cultural and political history from the May Fourth Era in the 1910s to the New Era, paying particular attention to the presence of humanism in the representation of film characters. We will 'find that humanism has existed only in times of lessened political control and that the film of the eighties was part of a decades-old evolution in film. We should not think that the New Era ended in 1989, following the Chinese government's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen. There would be new creative life for Chinese cinema in the early nineties; this study covers only the initial phase in what has been one of the most exciting eras in the history of Chinese cinema.