CULS30002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Communist Society, Kuomintang, Empowered

• School: University of Melbourne
• Department: Cultural Studies
• Course: CULS30002
• Professor: Dr.Dan Edwards

Document Summary

Visions of modernity: shanghai vernacular modernism and socialist realism. Different ways in which these cinemas represented & mediated experience of modernity in 20th c china. Based around industrialised studio system centred on shanghai similar to hollywood system. Studios owned permanent lots where they shot much of their product, maintained a permanent staff of actors, scriptwriters & crew. Everything needed to make a film centralised in one place. Strong leftist influence in many studios writers and directors vaguely concerned by ruling nationalist government"s (guomindang) lack of ability to resist incursions by colonial powers & by japanese. Highly commercialised system but many films of social critique, focus on dramatizing stories of the poor & underprivileged. Mix of foreign influences from all over the world inc. white russians" (people who had fled communist russia) and jewish/ political refuges feeling nazi germany. All this made shanghai the locus of western-style" modernity in china at that time.