Love Cannot Be Forgotten: Women and Nation in Post-Mao Cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACT “Love” is not an unusual topic in Chinese studies, but very few scholars have addressed issues relating to how love has been represented in post-Mao cinema. While most research on Chinese cinema has concentrated mainly on male directors, such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, I focus on films by women directors, who have been largely ignored. Starting in the late 1970s, women directors represented women from a more personal point of view and handled (albeit with discretion) subjects that had been marginalized. These developments attest to the process of untying of individuals from the grand narrative of nationalism and the emerging of gendered consciousness as a byproduct of burgeoning individual consciousness. This paper takes Zhang Nuanxin’s The Drive to Win (Sha’ou, 1981) and Sacrificed Youth (Qingchun ji, 1985) as examples of how gendered personal expression converges with state ideology in post-Mao China.