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Revolutionary Becomings
Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China
by Ying Qian
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Book Presentation:
From the toppling of the Qing Empire in 1911 to the political campaigns and mass protests in the Mao and post-Mao eras, revolutionary upheavals characterized China’s twentieth century. In Revolutionary Becomings¸ Ying Qian studies documentary film as an “eventful medium” deeply embedded in these upheavals and as a prism to investigate the entwined histories of media and China’s revolutionary movements.
With meticulous historical excavation and attention to intermedial practices and transnational linkages, Qian discusses how early media practitioners at the turn of the twentieth century intermingled with rival politicians and warlords as well as civic and business organizations. She reveals the foundational role documentary media played in the Chinese Communist Revolution as a bridge between Marxist theories and Chinese historical conditions. In considering the years after the Communist Party came to power, Qian traces the dialectical relationships between media practice, political relationality, and revolutionary epistemology from production campaigns during the Great Leap Forward to the “class struggles” during the Cultural Revolution and the reorganization of society in the post-Mao decade. Exploring a wide range of previously uninvestigated works and intervening in key debates in documentary studies and film and media history, Revolutionary Becomings provides a groundbreaking assessment of the significance of media to the historical unfolding and actualization of revolutionary movements.
About the Author:
Ying Qian is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.
Press Reviews:
Revolutionary Becomings opens our eyes to the extremely diverse practices of documentary in modern China over nearly a century. Taking a dialectical approach to revolution and media, Ying Qian urges us to consider documentary as a shaping force of social upheavals and revolutionary events. Rigorous, meticulous, and imaginative, this book makes us rethink documentary as a social medium. Weihong Bao, author of Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915-1945
In the age of generative AI and fake news, Qian offers a truly pathbreaking study of documentaries in a country famous for its political propaganda. The book soberly reminds us that what matters is not distinguishing between what is real and fictional, but rather how we can maintain reflexivity in a heavily mediated world, both then and now. Laikwan Pang, author of The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement
Revolutionary Becomings opens an exciting new window onto the unfairly neglected history of Chinese documentary by eschewing ideas of capturing reality and instead analyzing films as "eventful media" participating in the multiple reinventions of the country from the toppling of the Qing dynasty to the fall of the Gang of Four. Chris Berry, King’s College London
Interrogating common assumptions on what documentary is, Qian’s fascinating book excavates documentary as media artifact and production process and explicates its evolving theories and practices as integral to the upheavals of China’s tumultuous twentieth century. Revolutionary Becomings is invaluable for both scholars and practitioners of documentary media. Carma Hinton, filmmaker, director of Gate of Heavenly Peace and Morning Sun
Combining theoretical sophistication and interpretive skill with astonishing research and historical acuity, Ying Qian’s Revolutionary Becomings offers a remarkable history of twentieth century Chinese documentary focusing on its many entanglements with the constantly changing revolutionary politics of that era. This book sets a new standard for documentary studies. Charles Musser, Yale University
Sets the standard for writing in English on Chinese documentary film history...Essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between non-fiction and political change, inside and outside China. China Quarterly
[This] book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of institutionalization in the Chinese Communist revolution. Chinese Studies International
Expansive in scope, richly detailed, and expertly researched. Journal of Chinese History
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
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