From ‘Nationalism’to ‘Political Propaganda’:Research On Chen Lifu’s Educational Film Thoughts

With the continuous development of the social economy, the film, as the 8th art, has been realized by more and more people about its educational function, especially in the 1930 s, when China faced the fate of life and death under the situation of Japanese aggression against China and the struggle between different political parties. At that time, how to unify people’s thoughts and how to maintain the social stability became the troublesome problems of Kuomintang. As a leading figure holding an important post in Kuomintang, Chen Lifu forged indissoluble bond with Chinese films in his complicated life course. This paper tries to start from the first hand data and cast aside the prejudice towards the struggle between different political parties to tease out the relationship between Chen Lifu and Chinese films through collection of historical facts, which can get people to learn about the attitude of Kuomintang officials towards films and even the cultural development to a certain extent.The first chapter of this paper mainly describes the personal narratives of Chen Lifu starting from his family background, educational experiences and political career. The idea development of a person is closely related with his experiences; therefore, the life course of Chen Lifu, as the background information can’t be ignored in order to study his thoughts about the educational films.The second chapter mainly describes the film practice activities of Chen Lifu, which tries to demonstrate the true practical activities Chen Lifu participated in during 1920s~1930s regarding the development of Chinese films through screening and analysis on the historical data to analyze how this officer who had the supreme right of Kuomintang became related with Chinese films.The third chapter mainly explains the thoughts of Chen Lifu about the educational films, which doesn’t only present the historical data, but intensively studies the educational thoughts of Chen Lifu and analyzes their formation reason and course through analysis on his articles, works and political skills and teases out his manipulation to and influence on the film industry by his official identity to further reach his purpose of political propaganda and maintain the dominant position of Kuomintang regime.Finally, in the conclusion part, it concludes that film, as the tool of education publicity, is the phenomenon that universally exists in the world. Chen Lifu, as a dignitary of Kuomintang regime, reaches his purpose of ‘governing the country by a political party’ and ‘unifying the thought’ by using the propaganda and education function of films combining with China’s actual conditions.