A Brief History of Chinese Animation

I made this video in a Documentary Production class in Spring 2009; despite the fact that I was learning the ropes of Final Cut Express as I went along, I think the end result turned out very well. I did as much research as I could at the time, which was limited to John Lent's book Animation in Asia and the Pacific, and a few scattered internet sources. I wrote the script over the course of a few days, then borrowed a microphone from the professor and asked a friend to record the voiceover for me--he did a fantastic job! The video is a mixture of DVD rips and footage downloaded from various video sites; the music and sound effects are from the films themselves.

Even though I was quite happy with the way this project turned out, I didn't get a chance to upload it until now, because for a long time I couldn't figure out the correct way to export it from Final Cut Express.

As I have shown this film to different people over the years, I have been alerted to several factual errors that I wasn't aware of when I wrote the script; since I produced the whole film from start to finish in about five weeks, I didn't have much time to fact-check myself. For example, I have been told that the year of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai is way off, as well as the year marking the start of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. In addition, I have incorrect release years listed for at least one of the films (The Plank Bridge was actually released in 1988, for instance).

Nevertheless, I hope this little documentary is still informative and entertaining; enjoy!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• china
• chinese
• animation
• cartoon
• wan
• brothers
• te
• wei
• watercolor
• princess
• iron
• fan
• painting
• cutouts
• folded
• paper
• japanese
• invasion
• shanghai
• propaganda
• patriotic
• education
• entertaining
• people's
• republic
• mao
• zedong
• wang
• shuchen
• da
• three
• monks
• tadpoles
• nezha
• dragon
• king
• monkey
• sun
• wukong
• uproar
• in
• heaven
• mountains
• water
• feelings
• lotus
• lantern
• mythology
• great
• leap
• forward
• cultural
• revolution
• hundred
• flowers
• campaign

[lifeisdynamic]

Thank you for this enlightening little film,even though there were some factual errors. Good luck to you. I would not have seen your documentary without Google Doodles of the Wan Brothers, so thank you to Google also for sparking my interest in Chinese animation.

[LivelyLorikeet]

@lifeisdynamic Wow, I didn't even know about that Google Doodle with Sun Wukong; thanks for letting me know! I'm guessing that you're not the only person who sought out this documentary because of that Doodle, so I guess I should be thanking Google! Thanks for your interest, as well; I have another channel, called ObscureAnimation, where you can watch many of the films I talked about here! Enjoy!

[lifeisdynamic]

@LivelyLorikeet My Pleasure. Credit where credit is due.

Good luck in your ventures.

[TheFridgeMonsters]

This is great. Thanks so much.

[maureenrf]

This is a great documentary! I'm going to show it in my class. Thank you so much for posting it. Just out of curiosity, which school was it made at?

[richardhaw]

amazing