Revolutionary Becomings

Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China

Ying Qian

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English

Columbia University Press
12 March 2024

Documentary movies & films

Series: Investigating Visible Evidence: New Challenges for Documentary

From the toppling of the Qing Empire in 1911 to the Chinese Communist Party coming to power in 1949 to the various campaigns and mass protests through the Mao era and the post-Mao era of reform, revolutionary upheavals characterized China's twentieth century. In Revolutionary Becomings? Ying Qian studies documentary film as an ""eventful medium"" deeply embedded in these upheavals and as a prism to investigate the entwined histories of media and China's revolutionary movements.

With meticulous historical excavation and attention to intermedial practices and transnational linkages, Qian discusses how early media practitioners at the turn of the twentieth century intermingled with rival politicians and warlords as well as civic and business organizations. She reveals the foundational role documentary media played in the Chinese Communist Revolution as a bridge between Marxist theories and Chinese historical conditions. In considering the years after the Communist Party came to power, Qian traces the dialectical relationships between media practice, political relationality, and revolutionary epistemology from production campaigns during the Great Leap Forward to the ""class struggles"" during the Cultural Revolution and the reorganization of society in the post-Mao decade. Exploring a wide range of previously uninvestigated works and intervening in key debates in documentary studies and film and media history, Revolutionary Becomings provides a groundbreaking assessment of the significance of media to the historical unfolding and actualization of revolutionary movements.

By: Ying Qian
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780231204477
ISBN 10: 0231204477
Series: Investigating Visible Evidence: New Challenges for Documentary
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 12 March 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Ying Qian is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.

Reviews for Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China

Revolutionary Becomings opens our eyes to the extremely diverse practices of documentary in modern China for nearly a century. Taking a dialectical approach to revolution and media, Ying Qian urges us to consider documentary itself as a shaping force of social upheavals and revolutionary events. Rigorous, meticulous, and imaginative, this book makes us rethink documentary as a social media. -- Weihong Bao, author or <i>Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915-1945</i> In the age of generative AI and fake news, Qian offers a truly path-breaking study of documentaries in a country famous for its political propaganda. The book soberly reminds us that what matters is not distinguishing between what is real and fictional, but rather how we can maintain reflexivity in a heavily mediated world, both then and now. -- Pang Laikwan, author of <i>The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement</i> Revolutionary Becomings opens an exciting new window onto the unfairly neglected history of Chinese documentary by eschewing ideas of capturing reality and instead analyzing films as “eventful media” participating in the multiple reinventions of the country from the toppling of the Qing Dynasty to the fall of the Gang of Four. -- Chris Berry, King’s College London