Projecting a Nation

Chinese Cinema before 1949

Jubin Hu

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• Published: 2003
• Subject Listing: Film Studies
  Asian Studies
• Bibliographic information: 180 pp., 6" x 9"
• Territorial rights: North American rights only
• Distributed for: Hong Kong University Press
• Contents

The first major work on pre-1949 Chinese cinema written in English, Projecting a Nation represents an important contribution to existing discussions of both Chinese cinema and national cinema. Its historical research is based on sources that were previously not widely available, and therefore it is indispensable to scholars interested in Chinese film history.

The book analyses the wide variety of concepts of Chinese national cinema between the early years of the twentieth century and 1949, and contrasts them to concepts of national cinema in Europe. Hu maintains that debates and questions about the status and meaning of the 'national' in Chinese national cinema are central to any consideration of cinema during this period, and addresses the issue of Chinese nationalism as being part of the complex history of cinema in the early modern Chinese nation.

Juibin Hu worked for the China Film Archive in Beijing for many years, and is the author of An Ideological Hisory of New China Cinema (Xin Zhongguo dianying yishixingtai shi) and co-author of Chinese Silent Film History (Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi). He is currently a Visiting Assistant professor in the Department of East Asian languages and Literatures at the University of Oregon.

"The field of cinema studies in general, and Chinese cinema studies in particular, has been crying out for a reliable history in English of pre-1949 cinema, and this is it. Jubin Hu's book is comprehensive, well supported, and has a coherent argument taking it beyond a chronicle of facts to make it an engaging and readable intervention in debates and arguments about Chinese cinema. This book represents a major achievement." - Chris Berry, University of California, Berkeley

Acknowledgments
Chinese national Cinema: An Introduction
Cinema and Cultural Awareness (1896-1920)
Industrial Nationalism (1921-1930)
Class Nationalism Versus Traditionalist Nationalism (1931-1936)
Colonial and Anti-colonial Nationalisms (1937-1945)
Nationalism and Modernization (1946-1949)
Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index