Leading scholar Paul G. Pickowicz traces the dynamic history of Chinese filmmaking and its stunning development decade-by-decade since the 1920s. During the last one hundred years, China has been embroiled in a seemingly unending series of wars, revolutions, and jarring social transformations. Despite daunting censorship obstacles, Chinese filmmakers have found ingenious ways of taking political stands and weighing in-for better or worse-on the most explosive social, cultural, and economic issues of the day. Exploring the often gut-wrenching controversies generated by their work, Pickowicz offers a unique and perceptive window on Chinese culture and society.

Introduction: The Sorrows and Joys of Chinese Filmmaking: Political and Personal Contexts Chapter 1: Shanghai Twenties: Early Chinese Cinematic Explorations of the Modern Marriage Chapter 2: The Theme of Spiritual Pollution in Chinese Films of the 1930s Chapter 3: Melodramatic Representation and the May Fourth Tradition of Chinese Cinema Chapter 4: Never-Ending Controversies: The Case of Remorse in Shanghai and Occupation-Era Chinese Filmmaking Chapter 5: Victory as Defeat: Postwar Visualizations of China's War of Resistance Chapter 6: Acting like Revolutionaries: Shi Hui, the Wenhua Studio, and Private-Sector Filmmaking, 1949-1952 Chapter 7: Zheng Junli, Complicity, and the Cultural History of Socialist China, 1949-1976 Chapter 8: The Limits of Cultural Thaw: Chinese Cinema in the Early 1960s Chapter 9: Popular Cinema and Political Thought in Early Post-Mao China: Reflections on Official Pronouncements, Film, and the Film Audience Chapter 10: On the Eve of Tiananmen: Huang Jianxin and the Notion of Postsocialism Chapter 11: Velvet Prisons and the Political Economy of Chinese Filmmaking in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s Chapter 12: Social and Political Dynamics of Underground Filmmaking in Early-Twenty-First-Century China Additional Work on Chinese Cinema