Love and Duty: Translating Films and Teaching Online Through a Pandemic

The Chinese Film Classics project, launched in 2020, is an online research and teaching initiative aimed at making early Chinese films and cinema history more accessible to the general public. Led by Christopher Rea at the University of British Columbia, the project is centered on the website http://chinesefilmclassics.org and the companion YouTube channel Modern Chinese Cultural Studies. These two platforms together host new English translations of over two dozen Republican-era Chinese films, over two hundred film clips organized into thematic playlists, and a free online course of video lectures on Chinese film classics. This essay tells the story of how the Chinese Film Classics project grew from being a book project into a multiplatform translation, teaching, and publication project during the COVID-19 pandemic. Online teaching and social media publication involved multiple global storytellers: filmmakers, educators, translators, students, and the broader Internet public. How might moving things online change, or improve, the practice of cultural history? Rea highlights in particular the practical considerations facing the translator and gives examples of how, in a social media context, some of the stories are told not by creators and audiences but by data analytics.

A Refection on Digitalized Creation of Chinese Internet Big Movies in the Context of Internet

The 21st century is the era of the Internet, where movies see new vitality in artistic creation under the concept of the Internet+. Internet Big movies, a new type of films born with the advancement of Internet technology, have seen rapid development in less than a decade, having gradually established a mature production model. This paper provides reflection and analysis on the new phenomena in Chinese film production that involve numerous applications of big data technologies.

The Current Problems of Aesthetic Creation in Chinese Film Art

Current market-led Chinese film production has made huge achievements. Market indicators certainly have their validity. However, the power of the market has been exaggerated so that it controls everything. Because of the disregard of film as an aesthetic object, the content, form and aesthetic sensibility of films have been neglected, preventing creation at a higher level. The loss of multiple cultural identities due to market factors and artistic indifference is hardly sustainable in the long run. In recent years, Chinese films have gradually improved their artistic aesthetics. How to reasonably coordinate the market and the realization of the value of art and culture itself is an urgent problem to be solved. Firstly, Chinese films should have creative imagination; secondly, Chinese films should have the artistic expression of the national core value of heroism; thirdly, Chinese films should have meticulous depictions of people. Under the perspective of aesthetic appreciation, it is a top priority for Chinese films to be more in line with reality and traditional aesthetic culture, and be more characterized in their creation.

Analysis of China’s Film Industry in 2020

The influence of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic impacted the global film market in 2020. Across the world, the Chinese film market was the first to recover and, as a result, assumed a leading position. This was because the government launched a return-to-work policy, the capital market became more rational, the integration of film companies accelerated, the film industry model trended toward centralization, and market structures underwent deep adjustments. Despite shrinking market space and declining film production during 2020, the industry produced films that remained diverse in genre and subject. Where the “Matthew effect” of accumulated advantage is much more acute in the film industry, a more diverse distribution approach has emerged in the field of new media. With box office returns approaching a ceiling, it has become more urgent to stabilize the quality of top films, enrich and enhance the competitiveness of genre films, and strengthen the theatricality of art films. It also became urgent to improve the film industry system, the product system, the market system, and the box office window system.

Performance and Control of Tobacco in Chinese Film and Television Dramas

Objectives: China is the world's largest country in tobacco cultivation, production, consumption and smokers. The number of smokers accounts for nearly 30% of the total number of smokers in the world. 740 million people are endangered by "second hand smoke", most of them women and children. To ac hieve the goal of healthy China, tobacco control is a very important link. Reducing the number of smokers is an important problem to be solved, and the mass media plays an important role in this problem. Once tobacco is shaped as a positive symbol in mass communication, smoking will become an unhealthy social atmosphere. Then, what kind of image tobacco generally appears in the mass media and what impact it will bring to the society, this paper attempts to explore the tobacco symbols in Chinese film and tel evision dramas as the research object.

Scene, Aesthetics and Industry Chain: Postmodern Cultural Thinking of Films in 5G Era

With the in-depth influence of 5G technology on film art, the postmodern culture contained in it is also becoming more and more obvious. Understanding the context of the 5G era and clarifying the origin of film postmodernism culture will help us deeply analyze the cause of the rise of postmodernism film culture, especially the important influence of the expansion of film application scenes, the innovation of the whole industry chain and the evolution of film aesthetics on the rise of postmodernism film culture. In addition, we should also think deeply about the film culture under the post-modernism of 5G era, and explore the way to stick to the benign development of film creation and film industry. To enhance our cognition and appreciation of post-modern film culture, to give play to the positive factors of post-modern film culture, and to promote the healthy and prosperous development of Chinese film production, creation and industry.