Cinematic Guerrillas - by Jie Li (Hardcover)

About the Book

Cinematic Guerrillas is a media history of Chinese film exhibition and reception that offers fresh insights into the powers and limits of propaganda.

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2025 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies

Winner, 2024 Moving Image Book Award, Kraszna-Krausz Foundation

Winner, 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Honorable Mention, 2025 Joseph Levenson Prize (post-1900), Association for Asian Studies

How might cinema make revolution and mobilize the masses? In socialist China, the film exhibition network expanded from fewer than six hundred movie theaters to more than a hundred thousand mobile film projectionist teams. Holding screenings in improvised open-air spaces in rural areas lacking electricity, these roving projectionists brought not only films but also power generators, loudspeakers, slideshows, posters, live performances, and mass ritual participation, amplifying the era's utopian dreams and violent upheavals.

Cinematic Guerrillas is a media history of Chinese film exhibition and reception that offers fresh insights into the powers and limits of propaganda. Drawing on a wealth of archives, memoirs, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, Jie Li examines the media networks and environments, discourses and practices, experiences and memories of film projectionists and their grassroots audiences from the 1940s to the 1980s. She considers the ideology and practice of "cinematic guerrillas"--at once denoting onscreen militants, off-the-grid movie teams, and unruly moviegoers--bridging Maoist iconography, the experiences of projectionists, and popular participation and resistance. Li reconceptualizes socialist media practices as "revolutionary spirit mediumship" that aimed to turn audiences into congregations, contribute to the Mao cult, convert skeptics of revolutionary miracles, and exorcize class enemies.

Cinematic Guerrillas considers cinema's meanings for revolution and nation building; successive generations of projectionists; workers, peasants, and soldiers; women and ethnic minorities; and national leaders, local cadres, and cultural censors. By reading diverse, vivid, and often surprising accounts of moviegoing, Li excavates Chinese media theories that provide a critical new perspective on world cinema.

Review Quotes

A properly historical and ethnographically respectful account of film projectionists in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and their role in the political project(s) of the post-Liberation period, the Cultural Revolution and the years after Mao's death and immediately preceding the Reform era.--Stephanie Hemelryk Donald "Screen"

An important, innovative, and often entertaining new study of cinema in China from the 1940s to the 1980s...this highly readable book appeals to a wide range of readers from across multiple fields.-- "Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television"

Another strength of this book is interdisciplinary research. Li incorporates scholarship about religiosity (including rituals and their spaces) and conveys, in very accessible and metaphorical language, the participatory nature of cinematic rituals and guerrillas. Pictorial illustrations and meticulous translations capture the nuances of primary evidence and make the book an enjoyable read.-- "Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies"

Li's book is daring and ambitious in its attempt to blend multiple research methodologies, especially in its use of fieldwork and oral histories to move modern and contemporary Chinese literary and media studies in new directions.-- "China Journal"

An exceptional study, distinguished by its unique methodology combining textual and visual sources, fieldwork, and oral history. Although the text is very dense, Jie Li consistently guides the reader with remarkable clarity and pedagogical finesse. There is no doubt that this book will become a milestone in the field of Chinese media studies.-- "China Perspectives"

It is no exaggeration to say that the bygone era of Chinese socialism offers both struggle experiences and cautionary tales for today's world. This is why Cinematic Guerrillas is a book that should be read by a broad audience beyond those interested in global cinema culture or Chinese socialism.-- "Chinese Studies International"

An essential addition to any curriculum or research agenda focusing on modern Chinese history and media studies, guaranteed to stimulate insightful discussions and inspire future research.-- "PRC History Review"

Expansive in scope, richly detailed, and expertly researched.-- "Journal of Chinese History"

[A] fascinating, eloquent study . . . Jie Li is a guerrilla historian who relies on alertness and mobility, assesses the terrain of film and media studies, and surveys their relative strengths. Having grasped the situation of her historical subjects, she then quietly but effectively strikes. Cinematic Guerrillas is the result.--Charles Musser "Cinéaste"

A theoretically rigorous analysis complemented by extensive fieldwork research . . . Li exquisitely restores the memories and testimonies of mobile projectionists and audience members.--Yiyang Hou "The China Quarterly"

A rich, sometimes dense, multilayered investigation of film and propaganda in Communist China . . . [Readers] will come away from the book with a more sophisticated appreciation of the importance of cinema in contemporary Chinese politics and a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of propaganda transmission and reception.--Russell Burgos "H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews"

Thoroughly researched and well written, broad in scope and fascinating in detail, Cinematic Guerrillas offers cinematic history as political and cultural history in Mao's China . . .Li's insights and kaleidoscopic approach, like a projector, keep many moving parts flowing so the images become clear, smooth, entertaining, and comprehensive, providing a model for studying socialist cinema.-- "Choice Reviews"

Through its marvelous narrative, Cinematic Guerrillas makes a compelling case that reception constitutes the core of cinema's function and value . . . What Li manages to both uncover and produce is a rich and richly contradictory history of Chinese cinema, or, more precisely, of cinema in China, detailing in its intricacies how projectionists and audiences became key conduits of the "media revolution" that others might more commonly call the "Chinese revolution."--Bruno Guaraná "Film Quarterly"

Cinematic Guerillas is both a bumper research harvest and a thrilling read. The memories of Mao-era mobile projectionists and audiences make us understand and feel how the cinema enchanted its audiences with revolutionary spirit--and how it made them willing to pay the heavy price of utopian dreams.--Chris Berry, coeditor of Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation

Cinematic Guerrillas is cultural history at its best. Not only does it provide an engaging account of the culture of the young and aspiring PRC, but it also lays out an impeccable method to study socialist culture, straddling media studies and political economy to critically analyze some fundamental features of its very effective propaganda.--Laikwan Pang, author of The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China's Cultural Revolution

How do you turn a scattered population into a revolutionary mass? Drawing on extensive archival and oral research, Li depicts the work of thousands of mobile projectionists traveling all over China training rural peoples for political struggle. A tour de force of historical reconstruction and theoretical intervention, this book shows how the Chinese revolution was also a media revolution dependent on the logistical work of 'cinematic guerillas.'--Brian Larkin, author of Signal and Noise: Infrastructure, Media, and Urban Culture in Nigeria

In this groundbreaking book, Jie Li delivers a fascinating account of socialist cinema. Reviving the scene of mobile projection and reception, Li reveals the human as central to technology, infrastructure, and energy. By taking propaganda history seriously, Li makes a major contribution to global media theory and archaeology. Cinematic Guerrillas will reverberate across multiple fields in the years to come.--Weihong Bao, author of Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China

Cinematic Guerrillas offers an ingenious exploration of Mao-era China. Jie Li considers state messages conveyed in film, embedding them in a physical mediascape of itinerant projectionists who hauled equipment, cash-strapped collectives who paid for local screenings, and villagers who flocked to open-air showings for entertainment and respite. Perceptive, hilarious, and heartbreaking.--Gail Hershatter, author of The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China's Collective Past

Jie Li's research on Maoist cinema as a spirit medium reveals the constant struggle to keep revolutionary enthusiasm high after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Her research on mobile projectionists brings out the complexity of working with rural audiences who sought the entertainment value in films meant to be understood ideologically. This book is a fine contribution to the study of cinema under socialism.--Wendy Larson, author of Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture

About the Author

Jie Li is professor of East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University. Her books include Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life (Columbia, 2014), Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution (2016), and Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era (2020).