Beijing Film Academy Yearbook 2016
148
Beijing Film Academy Yearbook 2016
148eBook
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Overview
The Beijing Film Academy Yearbook is a collection of specially selected articles chosen from issues of the Journal of Beijing Film Academy. This volume collates articles published in the journal throughout 2016, and are translated for an English-speaking readership. Due to the increased academic focus on Chinese cinema, the Beijing Film Academy Yearbook project aims to contribute to this research with a first-hand perspective in order to narrow the gap for cross-culture scholarly dialogue.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783208258 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 08/15/2017 |
| Series: | ISSN |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 148 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
The Journal of the Beijing Film Academy, founded in 1984, is edited by the Beijing Film Academy’s Department of Film Studies and is highly respected for showcasing the foremost research in Chinese cinema and film education.
The Journal of the Beijing Film Academy, founded in 1984, is edited by the Beijing Film Academy’s Department of Film Studies and is highly respected for showcasing the foremost research in Chinese cinema and film education.
Series Editor of Intellect China Library
Read an Excerpt
Beijing Film Academy Yearbook 2016
By Emma Rhys
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2017 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-825-8
CHAPTER 1
Cai YuanPei's Thoughts on Film Education
Wu, YueQing; Li, Long
Cai YuanPei (1868–1940) was a revolutionist for democracy, a scientist and an educator in modern Chinese history. He was the Minster of Education for the Nanking Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China; Vice Chancellor of Peking University; member of the Central Monitoring Department of the Nationalist Party of the Republic of China; member of the Central Politics Committee; and held many other positions. In addition, he was also the Chief of the highest academic research and education department. In 1928, he resigned all his administrative positions and focused on his role as Dean for the Academia Sinica. He actively supported the New Culture Movement, promoting his educational ethos to treat freedom of thoughts as principles and to practice absorbing flexibly as a belief; he proposed academic research, supported educational activities and paid several visits to Great Britain and France to observe their educational system, as well as to deliver talks. Between 1930 and 1934, he organized the Chinese Citizen's Rights Protection Society with Soong Ching-ling (Song QingLing) and was actively involved in a series of anti-Japanese aggression campaigns. Cai's unique background made him appreciate the importance of using film for education and for rescuing the country's spirit from foreign invasions. This also became a major influence on the later Leftist Film Movement.
Current research on Cai's ideas is generally comprehensive; however, research on his contributions to film education is only evident in two journal articles: 'Cai YuanPei: Pioneer of Early Film Education' (2011) by Wang Ying; and 'Cai YuanPei's Contributions towards Early Chinese Cinema' (2013) by Shan BingXin. These two publications are supportive reference materials for this chapter. On top of the existing journal articles about the history of this period, this chapter will contribute some new research. The speech by Cai on 'The Way Out for Film Education' presented in 1933 comes to a conclusion on the issue after his experiences working in film education. This chapter not only summarizes Cai's practical activities in supporting film education, but it also reflects on his thoughts on film education. This chapter, therefore, wishes to analyse Cai's thoughts on film education and their potential to inspire current practices in film education.
The Background of Cai YuanPei's Thoughts on Film Education
Since the birth of film and cinema there have always been two main directions: film for commercial purposes and film for educational purposes. The United States, Soviet Union, France and Japan all emphasized using film as a tool for national education. Therefore, the idea of film education in China emerged within this broader external historical context. Certain specific internal conditions also need to be considered. At that time, the films being screened in the country were mostly western commercial pictures, alongside films with themes such as superstition and pornography that were made by local Chinese people; therefore, the impact of film culture on society at that time was rather negative. As a result of this critical condition, the education sector and several other sectors in Chinese society realized that there was a need to create more films with a positive and educational purpose. Thus, the use of film for educational purposes was inevitable.
During this time, China was involved in long wars and crises, the nation was facing oblivion: 'to rescue the country through education' was many intellectuals' mission at that time. The famous May Fourth Movement occurred in 1919. Cai YuanPei, Tao XingZhi and many other intellectuals from the education sectors actively searched for solutions to the crisis facing the country. However, while academic education was still not popularized at the time in China, social education was even more difficult, as almost 90% of the people was illiterate. Therefore, Cai set up a department for social education within the Ministry of Education and Tao and others founded the Chinese Civilian Education Promotion Society in the hope of popularizing education. At that time, the idea of using film's unique combination of image and sound for educational purposes was agreed to by the majority of the government. Therefore, the Chinese Film Education Association was also founded, in order to support a series of film education practices and activities.
Film as an Educational Tool
On 13 January 1912, Cai was appointed as the first Minister of Education for the Republic of China and the Ministry of Education was founded. On 30 January, Minister Cai made an official announcement to all province captaincies declaring himself as the Minister of Education for the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China, in order to promote education in society:
education in society (social education) is our urgent mission today, [...] I encourage every city and region to promote speeches and talks, or to include screenings of films with good influence, as supplements. [...] In terms of the standard of rhetoric it should focus on the facts of this revolution, the rights, obligations and the spirit of the Warrior of the Republic, in particular focusing on the moral education of citizens. (Cai 1921: 1)
On 8 February, Cai published an official government document entitled 'Comments on New Education', proposing (1) democracy within a military-based country, (2) social responsibility and martial training, (3) citizen morality, (4) a world-view perspective and (5) good skills in aesthetic and athletic. Combined, these five systems make up the new educational foundation. It is not hard to see from the above-mentioned standards what Minister Cai meant by 'screenings of films with good influence.' He suggested using films and slides with educational significance as a supplement for the basic contents of civic education. This was the first time that an official government document had referred to film as education and for mass-communication purposes. Minister Cai proposed: 'Within the education system, we now have two sectors, general education and specialized education. I propose that in order to strengthen education and civic education, to establish a new department for social education within the Ministry' (quoted in Gao 1999: 395). This was also the first time that the national administrative sector had paid attention to civic education. Such foundational directives aided later improvements, such as setting educational management policy; conducting conferences and speeches; opening libraries, theatres and galleries; and so on. In 1915, the Ministry of Education conducted a conference on general education. The main agenda was to discuss matters regarding general education, societal reform and popularizing education. Cai stated at the conference:
about general education, there is one direct and easy way, that is the electric shadows. The budget of film is lower, but it is easier to make an effect with electric shadows. Galleries, museums and so on, are also good for public education, to increase the public's knowledge, the costs are also not enormous. I encourage all general educators to promote this effective strategy and it will bring positive results. (Cai 1917)
The 'electric shadows' here refers to film. Cai also pointed out that at cinemas in Germany, the government had banned students from watching films that were controversial; they established film-screening days for young students and mainly showed educational science films. Cai proposed in his speech that in China, education ought to be implemented horizontally; regardless of wealth or age, all people should have the right to be educated. He emphasized that the majority of the Chinese population was illiterate, which was why it was necessary to establish general education and promote this concept using a variety of tools. Cai then proposed that 'films with good influence' should be used as a platform for general civic education.
When Cai talked about rural education in 1915, he proposed the utilization of every possible strategy and resource to facilitate rural civic education. Among his suggestions, he proposed the use of 'pictures or moving pictures to introduce civil culture in different areas' (Cai [1915] 1984: 405). In 1916, the Sino-French Education Association began to launch schools in Paris for Chinese labourers. Cai was appointed as the Chair for China. He wrote 'Lecture on Chinese Labour Schools' ([1916] 1920), in which he mentioned literature art, music, drama and ten other categories of intellectual education. Within the section on drama, he wrote:
another medium to communicate drama is moving pictures; although it is only pictorial without sound and its effectiveness might not be as obvious as drama in theatres, it is able to communicate through all sorts of body language and to achieve a realm of poetic (Yi jing); its natural quality and its technological advantage creates a quality of layered depth, which makes up for what books are not able to achieve. Therefore, social education will benefit a great deal from it. (Cai [1916] 1920: 557)
Once again, Cai emphasized the importance of using film as a tool for social education and highlighted the advantage the film medium has over traditional books.
In 1922, Cai delivered a talk at the Beijing Citizens Association and mentioned citizens' obligations towards education: 'education does not only rely on schools, or lectures. Lectures, reading rooms for books and newspapers, these are all education; zoos, botanical gardens, museums, libraries, theatres, cinemas all contribute to education' (1984: 209). Thus, in Cai's view, citizens should take up educational responsibilities in a variety of sectors.
Cai also proposed the use of film to promote 'aesthetic education'. In 1930, he wrote an essay entitled 'Aesthetic Education' (Cai [1930] 1974), in which he suggested places to conduct aesthetic education – such as schools, the family home, the city – and suggested that cinemas should be launched to screen 'good influence' films in order to achieve effective aesthetic education. He wrote:
we should launch public theatres and cinemas, deliver lectures on classic drama literature and academic research on it and screen films that are able to cultivate culture and emotion [...] and we should ban all works that are the opposed to real aesthetic beauty. (Cai [1930] 1974: 743)
He also suggested that public theatres and cinemas ought to have low ticket prices; any private cinema or film must go through public censorship; comedy dramas, detective stories with hints of danger and films about love and relationships should all be banned; and films on nature and adaptations of classic works by famous authors ought to be screened more often.
As the above historical materials demonstrate, Cai was extremely keen on utilizing the medium/art of film as a tool to achieve his grand education mission: social education, mass citizen education, rural education, aesthetic education and so on.
To Recognize the Two Sides of Film and to Become the Pioneer of Film Education
In May 1928, the National Meeting on Education was held at the Nanking Central University's sports stadium. During the meeting, Cai requested suggestions from the delegates on how to improve the practical issues of developing education. Zhang JuSheng made a phone call to Cai to report his concern on several issues merged in Shanghai lately, which all related to civic education, in particular on how cinema influences the youngsters.
Cai replied to Zhang in a letter:
it is indeed worth the attention from delegates of the meeting on the matter of films' negative impact. Because now the meeting has finished, I have not managed to propose a solution in detail; however, I mentioned this issue to others during casual conversations and gave advice to delegates individually – it will work the same, hopefully. In terms of film censorship, this is mentioned in other proposals. (Cited in Gao 1990: 218)
The Commercial Press began to make films in 1918. The main four genres were 'scenic', 'education', 'current affairs' and 'Chinese opera'. Zhang YuanJi and others treated film as a tool for education: 'we can use film to resist anything that has a bad influence and it should be used in order to establish civic education comprehensively' (quoted in Cheng 1981: 40). In fact, this letter from Zhang to Cai intended to propose a system of film censorship in order to regulate film education.
In 1931, Cai divided academic scholarship into two main categories: sciences and aesthetics. Aesthetics refers to education in beauty; it comprises music, drama, museums, photography, film, gramophone, radio and other mediums, in order to undertake some kind of aesthetic training. In particular, Cai proposed that:
film is the most convenient tool for education, since it has become more and more popular, many consider its ethos as entertainment. There are very few films made by local Chinese and most of these rare works are designed in a very simplistic way. Films imported from the West mainly contain elements of excitement and their negative influence is much stronger than their positive. (Cai 1931: 17)
The above reflects Cai's recognition of the two sides of film, which determined his later suggestion that film is '30% entertainment, 70% education'. This thinking left an important legacy in terms of film education and it was also an important first step for the later regulation of film education.
Guo YouShou began to draft the first legal regulations on film in 1931. Under Cai, Guo and Guo's pupils' encouragement, the government set up a Film Censorship Board. Guo acted as the only administrative member and oversaw the Board's activities. In 1933, Cai and Guo included the Film Censorship Legislation as part of the Legislation on Education; thus, film was placed directly under the monitor of the Minister of Education, which highlighted the educational aspect of film (Sun 2010: 374). After the Chinese Film Education Association was founded in 1933, it also established a department for researching Chinese film arts, which has the power to censor any films that contain a 'bad influence'. According to Cai's basic principles, the Association set up five main standards for film contents: 'all films must be for educational purposes. Films that pass the five standards receive an award, otherwise they should be banned' (Central Editorial 1944: 18). These five standards have become a reference for both film-making and film importing. The Censorship Board's members check on many films and ban any that are not following these standards. Such practices introduced a certain oppressive atmosphere in the film industry as anyone who disobeyed Cai's thoughts on film education when designing their film contents were in danger of being banned. Thus, Cai and Guo provided the necessary circumstances from a legal perspective that led to the birth of the Leftist Film Movement later on; and Cai became the pioneer of film education regulation.
Emphasis on Training Film Talents to Become Film Educators
Guo YouShou was a scholar in law who entered Peking University to study under the supervision of Cai, from whom he gained high recognition. Later on, Cai sent him to France to gain his doctoral degree. Guo was the first Chinese doctoral candidate to study and research about film in the birth place of cinema, Paris. Guo contributed a great deal towards film education in China with the support of Cai, who named him 'The First Film Person in China'.
In 1931, both Cai and his student Guo were invited by the University of Nanking's Film Education Committee to present a lecture under the title 'Film and Education'. Sun MingJing was the transcriber at that time and his transcription received compliments from both Cai and Guo. From then on, Cai treated Sun as a new pupil and began to provide him training. During this lecture, for the first time, Cai shared his philosophy of film: 'the one who commands film commands the soul of the people, the one who commands the soul of the people commands heaven and earth' (quoted in Sun 2006: 68). Cai listed nine suggestions for film education, leading Sun to reflect: 'Mr Cai's nine suggestions on film impacted my whole life' (Sun 2006: 68). Under the supervision of Cai, Sun made a number of educational films and commenced the first comprehensive project on film and the State in Chinese film history, entitled 'Research on the Status of the State'.
In 1932, Cai, Guo and several others gathered enthusiasts from all sectors in order to establish the Chinese Film Education Association. Cai himself acted as chairman and spoke in the opening address: although film is a form of entertainment, it has a huge influence on the practice of education [...] in my opinion film should be 30% entertainment, 70% education; [...] we should ban bad films such as films containing erotic fantasy [...] this is the meaning of film censorship; I hope this association will produce more films that are beneficial to the society. (quoted in Zhu, Xin and Sang 2006: 70) In 1935, under the supervision of Cai, Guo wrote an essay entitled 'Film Education Movement in Our Country', in addition to his studies on film in France. According to both Cai and Guo's distinction, there are two types of educational films: the moving type and the still type. The moving type includes film and television; the still type includes photography, slides and illustration. Film, television and photography are divided into four categories: sound, silent, black and white, and colour. 'Educational films' can be categorized into the following genres: 'common national-defence knowledge', 'natural science', 'geographic scenery', 'common industry knowledge', 'civic', 'agriculture' and others.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Beijing Film Academy Yearbook 2016 by Emma Rhys. Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Notes on Translation
Preface
Chapter 1: Cai YuanPei’s Thoughts on Film Education
Wu, YueQing; Li, Long
Chapter 2: Fifty Years of Film Directing Education
Xie, Fei
Chapter 3: Internet Literature and TV Drama: Brief Thoughts on the Emergence of a New Culture
Zhang, YiWu
Chapter 4: Between Heterotopias and Reality: Chinese Science Fiction Films in the 1980s and 1990s
Lin, Chao
Chapter 5: Binary Logic and Identity Dilemma of Chinese Sci-Fi Films through the Structuring of Narrative Space
Chen, YiShui
Chapter 6: The Psychological Resonance between the New Trends in Chinese Film-Making and the New Generation Audience
Zhou, Zhou
Chapter 7: Film Consumers as Both ‘God’ and ‘Creator’
Shi, WenXue
Chapter 8: ‘New Academicism’ Requires a Foundation of Academic Rationality to Adapt to New Environments
Zhong, DaFeng
Chapter 9: Twelve Years of Reform of Chinese Cinema
Wu, GuanPing
Notes on Contributors
Journal of BFA Advisory and Editorial Board
Notes on Intellect China Library Series