The versatile film projectionist: How to show films and serve the people in the 17 years period, 1949–1966

ABSTRACT

In the early years of the People's Republic of China, the state recognized the power of film as a mass medium and expanded a national exhibition network consisting of movie theaters, workers’ clubs and mobile film projections to bring film to the people. One figure that soon caught the attention of national media was the film projectionist, who traditionally occupied a marginal position in the film industry. Meanwhile, Mao Zedong's ‘Talks at the Yan'an Forum of Literature and Arts’ was held as a guiding document for all cultural workers, who were expected to ‘serve the people’ by both making culture accessible to the masses and teaching them to be socialist subjects. This paper proposes to see the film projectionist as an embodiment of Chinese socialist cultural ideals that had roots in Mao's ‘Talks’. Previous scholarship has paid little attention to film exhibition during the 17 years period (1949–1966). Using newspapers, magazines and government documents, I detail exhibition practices and screening procedures that Maoist film projectionists were instructed to follow. I argue that as an ideal figure, the projectionist integrated mass entertainment and education by simultaneously playing the roles of the people's servant, the party propagandist and the film lecturer.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Ban Wang, Jean Ma, Haiyan Lee, Eldon Pei, as well as participants at the 2015 Stanford-Berkeley Graduate Student Conference on Modern Chinese Humanities for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Translations of original Chinese texts are mine unless otherwise noted.

2. This assertion, attributed to Lenin, was widely quoted in the Mao era, appearing in newspapers and magazines, as well as on the walls of movie theaters.

3. According to Di Wu (2006, 20), this article, written in 1956, was originally intended for publication in People's Daily. But it was not published at the time due to negative reactions from cultural administrators.

4. In reality, practices varied from region to region. In the city of Shanghai, for example, a government report from 1953 counted approximately 166 projectionists working in different film projection teams at the time, of which 99 had graduated from middle school and 67 only graduated from primary school. A large number of these projectionists also did not receive formal training, but learned from more experienced mentors while they were on the job (SMA 1953). The standards for becoming film projectionists were likely to be even lower in rural areas and regions populated by ethnic minorities.

5. Statistics vary on the number of film theaters in China before the CCP takeover. Yingjin Zhang (2004, 191) suggests a total of 596 theaters. According to Yun Shen (2005, 39), there were 678 theaters.

6. People's Daily reported on all of these propaganda initiatives. Reports on the ‘anti-electricity theft’ campaign appeared on 3 August, 5 August, 10 August and 28 October 1949; an article from 31 March 1950 introduced the effort to educate the masses about the cause of lunar eclipse; work in summer epidemic prevention from different regions was reported on 9 May, 26 June and 12 August 1950; the new Marriage Law was promoted on 20 April, 22 April, 21 May and 23 May 1950.

7. The journal was initially named Sources on Film Exhibition (Dianying fangying ziliao) and changed its title to Film Exhibition in 1957.

8. See T. Chen (2007, 66) and A. Li (2007) for more incidents of a similar nature.

9. The Guangdong guideline asks projection workers to spend two hours each week on learning about new films. Required readings include several film magazines and promotional materials distributed by regional branches of the China Film Company. In addition, projectionists are recommended to read other film-related sources, such as chained picture books (lianhuanhua), scripts and novels. During study sessions, members of a team should reflect on their own work, think about how they can learn from other projection teams, and discuss themes of particular films or general issues about film art (Guangdong 1956, 27).

10. Although making profit was not a primary goal of the socialist film industry, economic factors still played a part in film distribution and exhibition. The state expected film studios and film exhibition units to recover cost so the system can keep functioning without being overly dependent on state subsidies.

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Chenshu Zhou

Chenshu Zhou is a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. She specializes in modern Chinese literature, film and visual culture. Her doctoral dissertation is titled Socialism Off-Screen: Moviegoing in Maoist China, 1949–1976.