Building a New China in Cinema introduces English readers for the first time to one of the most exciting left-wing cinema traditions in the world. This unique book explores the history, ideology, and aesthetics of China's left-wing cinema movement, a quixotic film culture that was as political as commercial, as militant as sensationalist. Drawing on detailed archival research, Pang demonstrates that this cinema movement was a product of the era's social, economic, and political discourses. The author offers a close analysis of many rarely seen films, richly illustrated with over eighty stills collected from the Beijing Film Archive. With its original conceptual approach and rich use of primary sources, this book will be of interest not only to scholars and fans of Chinese cinema but to those who study the relationship between cinema and modernity.

Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 The History Chapter 3 The Merging of Histories Chapter 4 The Left-wing Cinema Movement Part 5 The Filmmakers and the Formation of a Collective Subjectivity Chapter 6 The Role of Authorship in the Age of Nationalism Chapter 7 Masculinity and Collectivism: Romancing Politics Chapter 8 Women's Stories On-screen versus Off-screen Part 9 The Spectators and The Film Culture Chapter 10 A Commercial Cinema or a Political Cinema? Chapter 11 A Shanghai Cinema or a Chinese Cinema? Chapter 12 Engaging Realism Part 13 Epilogue Chapter 14 Appendix I: Chinese Left-wing Movies of the 1930s Chapter 15 Appendix II: Popular Chinese Movies, 1932-1937 Chapter 16 Bibliography and Filmography