ABSTRACT

Chinese cinema regained its vitality in the wake of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and picked up momentum in the 1980s, an era marked by economic reform, modernization, and liberation of ideas. Breaking free from a decade of ideological repression and artistic dogmatism, filmmakers of different generations responded to socio-political changes, taking advantage of their relative freedom to reflect on recent Chinese history and explore innovative cinematic techniques. Key to their inquiry were the following questions: What had gone wrong in the socialist revolution? What could be done to make the nation and people’s lives better? Two major trends emerged during this period: the cinema of reflection and that of nativity. Although these two trends expressed common concerns of the post-Mao era, the cinema of reflection focused more on the historical forces that led up to the traumatic revolutionary past, whereas the cinema of nativity intended to excavate the deep-seated cultural factors that formed China, Chinese history, and socialist politics.