Chinese Animated Film and Ideology, 1940s-1970s: Fighting Puppets

This book examines animated propaganda produced in mainland China from the 1940s to the 1970s. The analyses of four puppet films demonstrate how animation and Maoist doctrine became tightly but dynamically entangled.

The book firstly contextualizes the production conditions and ideological contents of The Emperor’s Dream (1947), the first puppet film made at the Northeast Film Studio in Changchun. It then examines the artistic, intellectual, and ideological backbone of the puppet film Wander...