Image: 1979-2005 Most Valuable Film Criticism

Author: Dunhuang Literature and Art Publishing House
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: For film criticism, a significant historical event was the 1960s, when the French youth film critic and later world-renowned director Truffaut advocated for the "auteur theory" in France's Cahiers du Cinéma magazine, simultaneously declaring the independence of film criticism relative to film production. He emphasized the naming and identification rights of critics, highlighting the significance of film criticism as a self-assertive form of writing. In terms of theoretical film criticism, one or a more important aspect is the encounter and overlap of film theory, criticism, and cultural studies. In fact, the major debate between the so-called Birmingham School of British cultural studies and Sight and Sound, one of the leading film journals, may be one of the significant events in the history of 20th-century intellectual and cultural thought. In the history of Chinese cinema over a century, film criticism has played at least two important roles in shaping and political life. One was in the 1930s, when the left-wing filmmakers under Communist leadership successfully took over mass media, using a strong wave of films to reshape the direction of Chinese film production. The other was in the 1980s, when, in the thriving state-owned large and medium-sized enterprises at the beginning of the New Period, mass film criticism became one of the most active amateur cultural activities within the "work unit system," sparking a nationwide wave of enthusiasm for "a million workers' amateur film criticism"—much like many cultural phenomena of the 1980s. In the process of its transformation and disintegration, the original system burst into its subsequent glory.