The City Imagination In The Modernization Era

Based on the perspective of the experience of modernity, this thesis analyzes the city imagination in modern China, discusses the construct feature and variation regularity of these city imagination pictures by scrutinizing Mainland China’s contemporary city-theme movies in the New Period. Under a comprehensive perspective, the Chinese city-theme movies in the New Period presents the following city pictures:First,"the bright city in the happily longing mood" involving the city people responding to the reform policy; Second,"the average men’s city in the mixed feelings" involving ordinary city people in the social transition; Third,"the dissimilatory city in the hopelessly vagabond mood" involving marginal people in the city; Fourth,"the colorful and tasteful city in the affective mood" involving polynary city people. The variation mainstream of the experience of modernity in the city-theme movies can be portrayed as three steps:longing, anacatesthesia and reflection, reconstructing city by affection.The thesis contains six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, and mainly explains the research object, methods and basic framework. Then the second to the fifth chapters are the main part of the paper, and discuss all kinds of movies. The main contents are as follows:Firstly, The fourth generation film makers display the city reform that based on the wishing for the modernization; Secondly, The fifth generation film makers develop movies about urban transition that based on a shocking experience and moral reflection; Thirdly, The new generation film makers develop movies that based on their underlying life experience. Then the new generation film makers, the younger film makers and the fifth generation film makers form various movie style together. As a conclusion, the sixth chapter summarizes the main part, and then give a review from the three aspects, people show, space presentation and context of times. Based on the artistic reality, the city images of over30years on the whole reflect and record the modernization and changing course, show the life experience of modern Chinese people, and have the recording significance of video history.