1946 is one of those moments in Chinese film history when the industry had to reflect upon its role as mass media and the position it would take on the social situation in Shanghai. This was a moment defined not simply by leftist or rightist political affiliations, but by the voice filmmakers would raise on the social issues of the day. They were fuelled not by the imperatives of some national political agenda, but by their own experiences and by the cultural constraints of an industry situated by time, place and its own history. This was an industry of mass media, configured by the co-existence of private and state-run film companies that recognised the power of film to impact behaviour. Just as 1931 had witnessed a wave of more patriotic film making, 1946 saw a localised form of patriotism in which the people of Shanghai and their particular experience of Japanese occupation were the target audience. The epic films of the period give expression to a particular historical moment in Shanghai’s story and offer insights into Shanghai’s film world poised on the brink of its next era. 

The films Dr Johnson will examine in this period are about film culture; they create an interplay between fiction and reality by taking a romance and investing it with the real life struggles of Shanghai and the embedded real life stories of the actors and the filmmakers, known to the audience through the production of the star system circulated by a prolific print media. They both give recognition of the hardships of the postwar period and challenge their audience to produce a solution. 

Dr Linda Johnson first came to China in 1986 as a Law Lecturer, working in the Law Faculty at Hong Kong University until 1995 when she moved back to London. In 1998 she came to live in Shanghai with her husband and three daughters, opening Madame Mao’s Dowry in 2001, a concept design store specialising in art and artifacts of the Mao Period. Her interest in Chinese film began in Hong Kong in the 1980’s and has been growing ever since. She was invited to act as convener for the RAS Film Club in September 2011. She regularly gives talks on both Mao Period propaganda and Shanghai film. 

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