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The Views and Characteristics of Chinese Film Esthetics in the First Half of the 20th Century

  • Yiwen Wang

    Yiwen Wang is a professor at the School of Arts and Communication, Beijing Normal University. His research interests include film and television history, image cognition and comparison of Chinese and foreign films, and has published books such as Comparative Research on Chinese and Foreign Films in the First Half of the 20th Century. He was the first in China to adopt the method of cognitive neuroscience to study the effect of film acceptance, and presided over the research projects “Research on the Characteristics of Image Thinking and Cognition” and “Research on the Combined Effect of Audiovisual Elements of Film in the Context of Cognitive Neuroscience”, which were supported by National Social Science Foundation and Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education.

    TranslatorXiaoyan JuCommunication University of China, Beijing, China

    18813181500@163.com

    Xiaoyan Ju is a master’s student majoring in English translation at the Communication University of China. Her research interest is audiovisual translation. She is a member of the research team of the China National Social Science Major Research Project “General History of Film Translation in China” (Grant number: 20&ZD313), which has supported her translation of this article.

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Abstract

Chinese cinema made remarkable achievements in the early twentieth century from which the basic esthetic characteristics of Chinese film were as formed. It is impossible to accurately cover the artistic practice of Chinese film, because Chinese filmmaking is based on “meaning” (yiyi), that is, the ideological content to be expressed in the film. In the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese film esthetics engaged a complex array of ideas: the traditional Chinese pragmatic view of art; the continuity of American narrative cinema; the Soviet principle of opposition and conflict; as well as the poetics of classical Chinese esthetics. Among these orientations, the pragmatic view of art emerged as the core of Chinese film esthetics, determining not only film content but film form.


Corresponding author: Yiwen Wang, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, E-mail:

Translated by Xiaoyan Ju, Communication University of China.


Funding source: Theoretical Model Construction of Neurocinematics and Empirical Study of Brain Imaging of Film Cognition

Award Identifier / Grant number: 16YTA002

Funding source: Research on the Combination Effect of Audiovisual Elements of Film under the Background of Cognitive Neuroscience Theory

Award Identifier / Grant number: 19BC041

About the author

Yiwen Wang

Yiwen Wang is a professor at the School of Arts and Communication, Beijing Normal University. His research interests include film and television history, image cognition and comparison of Chinese and foreign films, and has published books such as Comparative Research on Chinese and Foreign Films in the First Half of the 20th Century. He was the first in China to adopt the method of cognitive neuroscience to study the effect of film acceptance, and presided over the research projects “Research on the Characteristics of Image Thinking and Cognition” and “Research on the Combined Effect of Audiovisual Elements of Film in the Context of Cognitive Neuroscience”, which were supported by National Social Science Foundation and Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education.

TranslatorXiaoyan JuCommunication University of China, Beijing, China

Xiaoyan Ju is a master’s student majoring in English translation at the Communication University of China. Her research interest is audiovisual translation. She is a member of the research team of the China National Social Science Major Research Project “General History of Film Translation in China” (Grant number: 20&ZD313), which has supported her translation of this article.

Acknowledgements

Yiwen Wang is supported by National Social Science Foundation of Arts and Beijing Social Science Foundation to preside over the project “Research on the Combination Effect of Audiovisual Elements of Film under the Background of Cognitive Neuroscience Theory” (Grant number: 19BC041) and the key project “Theoretical Model Construction of Neurocinematics and Empirical Study of Brain Imaging of Film Cognition” (Grant number: 16YTA002).

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Received: 2022-06-03
Accepted: 2022-06-04
Published Online: 2022-07-05
Published in Print: 2022-05-25

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