Source: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (10/1/2021)
Animation and the Republican Chinese Film Industry
By Christopher Rea
Animation appears throughout Chinese cinema of the Republican era (1912-1949). Historians have paid close attention to the handful of available fully-animated Republican films. Yet dozens of live-action films also include animated segments, and examining where, when, and why such short animations appear might open up new possible approaches both to animation studies and to cinema studies. This essay suggests a few principles and illustrates methodologies inspired by those principles by examining a small selection of film clips, mostly drawn from a growing open-access repository, the Early Chinese animation playlist I host on the YouTube channel Modern Chinese Cultural Studies. The goal of this essay is not to exhaust, but rather to encourage, exploration of how animated sequences function as a part of early Chinese feature filmmaking.
1. STUDY ANIMATION IN LIVE-ACTION FILMS TOO; DON’T FOCUS SOLELY ON ANIMATED FILMS
The animated full-length feature Princess Iron Fan (1941) has taken pride of place in studies of early Chinese animation, given its status as a “first.” Animated short films (like those discussed in Panel 2 of the 2021 ACAS inaugural conference) will enhance this history, once they become publicly available.
Scholars’ tendency to focus on completely-animated films is understandable, as such films represent the most dedicated investment of animators’ creativity. Animation is central to such work—not an afterthought or a supplement—and each film arguably represents a fully elaborated animation-centered aesthetic. Likewise, completely animated films have been the focus of studies of animation in the early People’s Republic of China, when government support of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio and other entities greatly boosted the production of cel, line-drawn, brush-drawn, and stop-motion shorts and features. [read the whole essay here]