The cinema of China is the filmmaking and film industry of the Chinese mainland under the People's Republic of China, one of three distinct historical threads of Chinese-language cinema together with the cinema of Hong Kong and the cinema of Taiwan. China is the home of the largest movie and drama production complex and film studios in the world, the Oriental Movie Metropolis and Hengdian World Studios. In 2012 the country became the second-largest market in the world by box office receipts. In 2016, the gross box office in China was CN¥45.71 billion. China has also become a major hub of business for Hollywood studios.
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his death in 1976. Its stated goal was to preserve Chinese socialism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. Though it failed to achieve its main objectives, the Cultural Revolution marked the effective return of Mao to the center of power in China after his political sidelining, in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine.
Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.
New Youth or La Jeunesse was a Chinese literary magazine founded by Chen Duxiu and published between 1915 and 1926. It strongly influenced both the New Culture Movement and the later May Fourth Movement.
The Socialist Education Movement, also known as the Four Cleanups Movement was a 1963–1965 movement launched by Mao Zedong in the People's Republic of China. Mao sought to remove reactionary elements within the bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), saying that "governance is also a process of socialist education."
Chen Kaige is a Chinese filmmaker. A leading figure of the fifth generation of Chinese directors, Chen is known for his visual flair and epic storytelling. Chen won the Palme d'Or at 1993 Cannes Film Festival and the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Award in 1993 for directing Farewell My Concubine.
Jiang Wen is a Chinese actor, screenwriter, and director. As a director, he is sometimes grouped with the "Sixth Generation" that emerged in the 1990s. Jiang is also well known internationally as an actor, having starred with Gong Li in Zhang Yimou's debut film Red Sorghum (1986), and more recently as Baze Malbus in the Star Wars film Rogue One (2016). He is the older brother of fellow actor Jiang Wu.
Hu Qili is a former high-ranking politician of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), known as a champion of the country's economic reform program in the 1980s. He was the first secretary of the CCP Secretariat from 1985 to 1989 and a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee from 1987 to 1989. Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he was purged for his sympathy toward the student protesters and his support for General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's opposition to the use of armed force. However, he returned to politics in 1991. In 2001, he became chairman of the Soong Ching-ling Foundation.
René Viénet is a French sinologist who is famous as a situationist writer and filmmaker. Viénet used the situationist technique of détournement — the diversion of already existing cultural elements to new subversive purposes.
From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China is a 1979 documentary film about Western culture breaking into China produced and directed by Murray Lerner. It portrays the famous violinist and music teacher Isaac Stern as the first American musician to collaborate with the China Central Symphony Society.
Liberalism in China is a development from classical liberalism as it was introduced into China during the Republican period and, later, reintroduced after the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Zhang Jie was a Chinese novelist and short-story writer. She also co-wrote a biography of the film director Wu Zuguang in 1986. She worked on writing different kinds of books for or with young protagonists; these types of works are included in junior and senior high school textbooks in China. She was one of China's first feminist writers.
Struggle sessions, or denunciation rallies or struggle meetings, were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being "class enemies" were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured, sometimes to death, often by people with whom they were close. These public rallies were most popular in the mass campaigns immediately before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, and peaked during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when they were used to instill a crusading spirit among crowds to promote Maoist thought reform.
Feudal fascism, also revolutionary-feudal totalitarianism, were official terms used by the post-Mao Zedong Chinese Communist Party to designate the ideology and rule of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution. In 1979, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Ye Jianying, described Mao Zedong's reign as a “feudal-fascist dictatorship” due to his revolutionary terror-based cult of personality, nationalism, and authoritarianism despite superficially socialist policies.
Bian Zhongyun was a deputy principal at the Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University, in Beijing, China. She was attracted to the Chinese Communist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War and joined the party in 1941, and before working for the high school in Beijing, she worked as an editor for People's Daily then located in rural Hebei. During the Red August of 1966, she was beaten to death by the school's female Red Guards, becoming the first educator to be beaten to death in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution.
Song Binbin, also known as Song Yaowu, was a Chinese woman who acted as a senior leader in the Chinese Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. She was known for allegedly beating her deputy principal Bian Zhongyun to death with wooden sticks, along with other students.
Hu Jie is a Chinese filmmaker and artist known for the films Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul (2004), Though I Am Gone (2007), and Spark (2013), which constitute a "trilogy of documentaries about Maoist China". Spark received the top prize at the 2014 Taiwan Independent Documentary Festival.
Red August is a term used to indicate a period of political violence and massacres in Beijing beginning in August 1966, during the Cultural Revolution. According to official statistics published in 1980 after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards in Beijing killed a total of 1,772 people during Red August, while 33,695 homes were ransacked and 85,196 families were forcibly displaced. However, according to official statistics published in November 1985, the number of deaths in Beijing during Red August was 10,275.
Boluan Fanzheng refers to a period of significant sociopolitical reforms starting with the accession of Deng Xiaoping to the paramount leadership in China, replacing Hua Guofeng, who had been appointed as Mao Zedong's successor before Mao's death in 1976. During this period, a far-reaching program of reforms was undertaken by Deng and his allies to "correct the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution", and restore order in the country. The start of the Boluan Fanzheng period is regarded as an inflection point in Chinese history, with its cultural adjustments later proven to be the bedrock upon which the parallel economic reform and opening up could take place. As such, aspects of market capitalism were successfully introduced to the Chinese economy, giving rise to a period of growth often characterized as one of the most impressive economic achievements in human history.
The 1978 Truth Criterion Controversy, also known as the 1978 Truth Criterion Discussion, sometimes referred to as the First Great Debate in contemporary China, was a sociopolitical debate around 1978, mainly revolving around Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers" and Deng Xiaoping's "Reform and opening up".
