The science education film: Cinematizing technocracy and internationalizing development

Abstract

An important chapter in the longer story of ‘forgotten’ socialist cinemas, PRC filmmaking for scientific education (kexue jiaoyu, or ke-jiao) was distinguished by a persistent international orientation. Prior to 1949 elite enlightenment efforts, League of Nations-inspired educational reform and missionary institutions of higher learning had created a vibrant, though limited, web of institutions devoted to popularizing scientific education through cinema. Like the propaganda system itself, these intellectual and institutional initiatives expanded further following Chinese Communist Party takeover. Scientific educators not only hoped to raise national standards of production, behaviour and knowledge, but also to use images of ‘scientific’ evidence and progress to bolster the PRC's reputation on the world stage. Despite deep geopolitical cleavages during the Cold War period, film-making for scientific education suggests the existence of a shared global culture — technocratic, homogenizing and nationally directed — which transcended nationally specific forms. The origins of this culture, however, lay not in the Cold War itself but rather in earlier, inter-war attempts to internationalize the uniform practices of state-led development and social management. In this sense, China's cinematic history sheds light on the origins and dissemination of scientific culture during the twentieth century.

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