International film circuits and global imaginaries in the People's Republic of China, 1949–57

This article analyses patterns of film export from the People's Republic of China (PRC) to socialist and non-socialist countries during the period from 1949 to 1957. By focusing on the types of films and the countries in which they are exhibited, the article argues for a multilateral and comparative approach to understanding the filmic geographies created, and the ways in which this international film exhibition and its dant filmic geographies participated in Maoist articulations of socialism and modernization as national and global projects. The focus on the first eight years of the PRC and the global circulation of PRC films during this time further encourages a reassessment of scholarship on world cinema that tends to locate socialist cinema and the films of Maoist China outside of global aesthetics, politics and cultural exhibition and production.