ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the “reproduction of the image of China” in films from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, a period of social transformation. This chapter first examines how the films represented the suffering during the Cultural Revolution, and how the screen narration represented and interpreted the suffering in that period. After the criticism of Unrequited Love, the high recognition of Evening Rain, and the completion of The Herdsman, the narration of the suffering during the Cultural Revolution in film creation has basically taken shape. In these films, in the face of the disaster of the Cultural Revolution, the warmth of the people helped the victims overcome their inner fears and anxieties, enabling them to persevere and usher in a spring of hope. This chapter also notes that, in the 1980s, the relationship between old cadres and their successors was a very sensitive social issue. Firm revolutionary beliefs and excellent moral standards were important elements of the image of old cadres presented in the films of the 1980s, and they were also the basis of the image of old cadres that the mainstream ideology hoped to construct among the public.
