Introduction : revolutionary spirit mediumship -- Cinematic nation-building : media networks and spiritual battlegrounds -- Mobile projectionists and the things they carried -- The three sisters movie team : projecting models, model projectionists, and female projectionists -- The cost of spiritual food : a ritual economy of rural cinema -- The hot noise of open-air cinema -- Guerrilla cinema and guerrilla reception -- Transcultural guerrillas : the reception of foreign films in socialist China -- Poisonous weeds and censorship as exorcism -- Epilogue.
Summary:
"What was cinema in socialist China? How did mass media enchant and mobilize the revolutionary masses? Cinematic Guerrillas is a cultural history of Maoist film exhibition, reception, and audiences that offers fresh insights into the "what," "when," "where," and "who" of world cinema. Moving beyond textual analysis and production histories, this book examines the media networks and environments, discourses and practices, experiences and memories of film projectionists and their grassroots audiences from the 1940s to the 1980s. Drawing on historical archives, memoirs, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork spanning multiple provinces, the study of "cinematic guerrillas" reconsiders Chinese propaganda in terms of mobile, heterogeneous and improvisational practices as well as its clandestine pleasures and unintended effects at the grassroots. Paying attention to cinema's spatial, material, bodily, and ritualistic dimensions, this book reconceptualizes audiovisual propaganda media in terms of their "revolutionary spirit mediumship," which turned audiences into congregations, contributed to the Mao "cult," converted skeptics of utopian visions, and exorcized class enemies"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.