ABSTRACT
China’s Model Workers were part of a significant multimedia propaganda campaign. Through the use of cinema, posters, ideological documents and comic books, depictions of their lives were delivered to the population along a variety of different trajectories. As one of the earliest films to employ the Model Worker template, Zhao Yiman was riddled with concerns about both presentation and message. The life of Zhao Yiman may have inspired a film version, but her presence in poster propaganda is extremely sparse. In 1950, director Sun Yu produced the first film portrayal of the iconic heroine Liu Hulan. Children may have taken the message to learn from Liu Hulan, but the broader masses would, ideally, also have been impressed by the material change that school children had enjoyed since liberation. Sun Yu’s cinematic interpretation of the Liu Hulan story focused to a great extent on the importance of Chinese nationalism.
