CHINESE ANIMATION FILMS.

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The Animation Film of the People's Republic of China. An attractive booklet, unrecorded institutionally, distributed by China's state film distributor to showcase cinematic advances and politically motivated cultural production in the early years of Mao's China. Two of the featured films were recognized with international awards, epitomising the 1950s golden age of Chinese animated cinema.This work, containing English and French text to reach a wide foreign audience, discusses three technically sophisticated pictures with themes and messages aligned to the ideological outlook of the new communist government. The first, "The Chinese Puppet Show" (1956), introduces four puppet show performances, each filmed in colour, of traditional Chinese stories and dances displaying folk customs, acts of heroism, and military cunning. The second, "Why the Crow is Black" (1955) preaches the value of hard work and the dangers of vanity. Finally, "The Magic Paintbrush" (1955) tells of a man able to paint objects that then come to life, stressing how he used this power for the good of ordinary people and against the overarching power of officialdom.The films included in the present publication were made in a period when animation emerged as an integral part of China's cinematic output. China's first full-length animated film was produced in 1941 by the renowned Wan Brothers studio, but production reached maturity during the 1950s, with the Wans and other prominent animators working out of the S

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