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In the mid to late 1920s, the Chinese film industry experienced a severe setback. Driven by the Ming Xing Film Company and the 'Merchant Movement', the Shanghai Film Guild was established in September 1927. It was the first filmmaking industry guild in the history of China. It was relatively outgoing in safeguarding the interests of the industry. It played an important role in maintaining the image of the industry, forcing the film censorship authority to revise its policies, and resisting those foreign films that insulted China. However, it did not form effective industry regulations to address industry autonomy. It did not change the vicious competition in the industry significantly, either. The establishment and operation of the guild was obviously affected by the wave of nationalism at the time, which caused it to perform more intensely in some situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a socialist country with a large population, China has a tight censorship system in various visual fields, including film, television and online communities. To censor films, China's central and local film authorities have successively established their own censorship systems. This article analyses the contemporary formation of local film censorship committees by combing through the history of film censorship in China. By discussing the relationship between intellectuals and the power behind film censorship, this study seeks to penetrate why and how intellectuals are co-opted by power and define the location of intellectuals in Chinese politics. Authorities reviewing films in a screening room symbolizes their 'powerful' gaze in the darkness, this visual mechanism of intellectual complicity with power, which requires Chinese filmmakers to learn how to survive under the combined influence of 'self-censorship' and intellectual vision. Furthermore, when exploring film censorship in contemporary China, the political logic of socialist China needs to be touched upon, where film censorship experts are in fact only the eyes of the power, not the power itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the authenticity principles connected to Hollywood's portrayal of China and the Chinese through three important American films screened or banned in China – Broken Blossoms (1919), Shanghai Express (1932), and The Good Earth (1937) – but with a special focus on both the historical reception and censorship of these films within China itself. It is argued that the feeling of (in)authenticity played an important role in Chinese audiences' appreciation of Hollywood narratives about the Chinese. Rather than focusing on the realistic or unrealistic depiction of the films, it is more effective to consider authenticity as a felt experience of emotional engagement and deeply felt sensuality. The felt authenticity signifies different constructed experiences and views which are rooted in different cultures and societies. The frequent appearance of 'Chinese' in American films produced in the first half of twentieth century had a ripple effect that impacted the Chinese public's own self-perception and self-recognition. The yearning for authenticity – expressed in the form of the government's censorship standards and procedures, as well as widespread protest in Chinese communities domestically and abroad – connected profoundly to the emerging sense of national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to distribute their films in China, U.S. filmmakers must submit them to Chinese censors for approval, which frequently require changes to films to portray China and the Chinese in a more favorable light. Given the millions of dollars to potentially be made in the large Chinese market, filmmakers have been willing to comply with Chinese censors, and have even begun to censor themselves by anticipating China's concerns and tailoring their films appropriately. In this way, China is able to influence the way it is portrayed in films not just for audiences in China, but in the United States and around the world. To combat the spread of Chinese propaganda in this way, Senator Ted Cruz introduced a bill, dubbed the SCRIPT Act, that would prohibit filmmakers from obtaining government assistance with their films unless they refrain from making changes to film content to accommodate the Chinese government. This Article examines whether the SCRIPT Act, by denying government support to filmmakers based on the content of their films, violates the First Amendment. While a bill might be crafted to do this in a way consistent with constitutional requirements, certain aspects of the SCRIPT Act make it likely to be unconstitutional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and the subsequent nationalization of the domestic film industry three years later, the Chinese Communist Party gained unlimited control over the entire Chinese film world, while film itself became an instrument of state propaganda. In order to fulfill their role ‘in the service of workers, peasants, and soldiers’, filmmakers had to abide strictly by the requirements which the CPC had imposed upon them, and subject themselves to a rigorous film censorship system. Artistic independence and freedom were subject to the political needs of a one-party state and its ideology. The establishment of a full-fledged and extremely complex institutional censorship system in 1953 resulted in the emergence of two distinct phenomena: self-censorship and social censorship. Both of these made it possible for the CPC to gain full control not only over the film industry, but also, in certain aspects, over the minds of filmmakers as well as the audiences. This article aims at revealing the mechanisms of the Chinese censorship system in the period stretching from 1949 to 1966, and to elucidate the disastrous effects which these exceedingly rigorous control mechanisms brought upon the Chinese film industry in general in this turbulent era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the changes in the Chinese independent film festival scene and reviews the challenges faced by the Beijing International Film Festival. The author offers an “update from the ruins,” as government censorship, an absence of institutional support, and finds hope for the future at the Shanghai International Film Festival, the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival, and the West Lake International Documentary Film Festival.

This article examines how the Chinese ruling party understands the role of film and how film policy has been used to promote China's soft power. It first explores shifts in policy over a period of 60 years in order to identify the government's overall approach to the film industry. Then it investigates 'Zou Chu Qu', the so-called 'Going-Out Policy', specifically aimed at promoting soft power. This article argues that, although the role of the film industry has been adjusted in response to developments in Chinese society, the principal function of film as a tool of propaganda, along with the broader censorship system, has not fundamentally changed. Such policy arrangements have resulted in a tension between the 'attraction' of soft power and the state's attraction to censorship. Consequently, there currently seems little room for Chinese films to contribute to China's soft power in any meaningful way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-examines the film theatre companies managed by Chinese individuals but registered under foreign laws, focusing on the representative film theatre owner. He Tingran and his companies. The article elucidates three roles of the foreign-registered film theatre companies: the capitalist, nationalist and social reformer. The owners of these companies occasionally switched between their Chinese and foreign identities to obtain various benefits, enjoying the various privileges of extraterritoriality, as well as maintaining control over the unconditional oligopoly of foreign distributors. This tactic included proclaiming the interests of the entire Chinese film industry within the foreign companies' association, on which they exerted a strong influence. The identity of being a foreign-registered film theatre company became crucial for resisting foreign pressures and protecting the domestic film market and film theatre culture post 1930s. However, these practices by the foreign-registered film theatre companies were not concluded either in terms of simple capitalist activities or blind nationalism; the many owners of those companies aimed to reform society through establishing a universal cinema culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay provides a genealogy of Chinese film policy by focusing on the censorship of representations of ghosts and the supernatural in Chinese cinema. From China's first film censorship policy in the 1920s to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, ghost-related cultural products have attracted significant attention from the government, and national policies regarding these representations correspond to a range of changing concerns. Chinese cinema finds itself in a most difficult plight, because of the political role it has been granted by the state, and the natural lure of ghosts for the audience. Filmic representation of the supernatural causes particular anxiety because ghosts can be allegorically rich, politically subversive and economically profitable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the censorship system of films in China which is described as stricter than the censorship of printed materials and television. It cites disunification, homosexuality and prodemocratic movement as major banned thematic categories in film production in China. It mentions how the success of a gay and lesbian film festival in an old factory on April 24, 2010 reflects the unique state of queer life in China. It cites the formation of an international alliance that brought China's queer existence to the West.

This article traces clandestine film censorship in colonial Hong Kong during the Cold War, Based on film studio records, press coverage, historical accounts, and recently declassified government documents, albeit limited and incomplete, the article examines sample cases and controversial foreign and Chinese films to throw light on the predicament of cross-border film exhibition in a distinctively politicized period. The evidence and arguments in this study point to a different conceptualization of transnationality and boundary-crossing of cinema grounded in its specific historical and geopolitical configuration. It is less about the easy traffic of capital, human resources, commodities, and ideas across the border than the dangerous trafficking of movie images, ideologies, human actions and propagandas that could destabilize the territorial boundary and its political status quo. Film screening and viewing in the colony are subject to strict official surveillance to quarantine the visuality of politics in the shadow of Cold War paranoia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines contradictory recent trends in the Chinese censorship system regarding literature and cinema. While measures targeting the publishers of "eight banned books" in January 2007 demonstrated a preoccupation with the representation of history, fiction writing with political implications (Yan Lianke, Tsering Woeser) also remains sensitive. Independent cinema has recently been attempting to enter the official circuit, prompting the Film Bureau to accept a form of dialogue and negotiation with film directors. Nonetheless, the Bureau's continued preoccupation with a non-conflictual representation of society betrays the government's persisting tendency to assess films in terms of their political effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the rules governing the censorship of motion pictures in China as of August 2004. Classifications of motion pictures; Duties of the film censorship committee established by the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television; Prohibitions on the contents of motion pictures.

The article describes the career and films directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou. Zhang is an internationally successful filmmaker. His early films "Red Sorghum and "Judou" manifested and illustrated the rural culture in Northern China. His films usually has political purposes. He used his films to attack gerontocracy that is imminent in the country. He also made films that examined and portrayed the sexual and social conditions of women in traditional Chinese society. His film "To Live" provides an overview of the Chinese history and his dismissal of the country's communist and socialist regime. Zhang's films has repeatedly been censored and criticized by the country's Film Bureau. He has introduced an anti-art bias in his two films "The Story of Qiu Ju" (Qui Ju da guan si, 1992) and "Not One Less" (Yi ge duo bu neng shao, 1999).

Focuses on motion pictures classified as for adults only by the censors in Hong Kong, China. Information on 'Intruder'; Lack of segregation from movies categorized for general patronage; Basis for the classification of the adult films; Impact of adult films on customs and copyright enforcement authorities.

The article focuses on the censorship in China in which the removal of links to the documentary film "Under the Dome" by Chai Jing exposed the country's fault line between development and environmental protection.