Wishful images: Three cinematographic portraits of a national film company

Abstract This paper explores how the Lianhua Film Company, founded in 1930 and active until 1937, communicated its identity and project through its films. These drama films offered an idealized portrait of the movie world and the Chinese society, revealing how the company’s members defined their role in a society looking to build a national identity. The paper focuses on three films: Two Stars of the Milky Way (1931) was a cinematographic interpretation of the founding statement of the company and depicts the company’s utopia. Lianhua’s Symphony (1936), composed of eight shorts, was a patriotic call to resist the Japanese enemy. A Sea of Talents (1937) was produced in the final days of Lianhua, just before the Japanese invasion. It offers a portrait of the artistic world disillusioned and far from patriotic anxieties. These films, analysed here alongside written sources, draw a portrait of the company both as it wanted to be seen and as it actually was. Studying them illuminates the hopes, battles and disillusions of a world of professionals who projected on the screen theirs visions, sometimes conflicting, of a stronger and unified Nation.