Public Ceremony: The Construction of Nationalism Through Mobile Film Screening Under Jiang Kai-shek’s CNP Government

Abstract

The Chinese Nationalist government initiated the first national network of mobile film screenings, which subsequently had a great influence on political propaganda in Chinese cinema. Based on corpus data from Chinese archives, diaries, newspapers, periodicals, and literature archived from 1931 to 1945, this study investigates the goals, effects, and shortcomings of mobile film exhibition under Jiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP) government in China, focusing on the Second Sino-Japanese War. I contend that the Nationalist government regarded films as propaganda to promote cultural identity, the social state, and collectivist ideology. To some extent, such films contributed to the development of democracy and national morality before the war, persuasion during the war, and consolation after the war. However, the mobile film industry in the Jiang era also suffered from some practical problems, such as the lack of planning, inefficient management, obscure content, and chaotic viewing settings. Hence, mobile projection remained a form of public ceremony whose impact deviated from its original intent.