Abstract
The excessive focus on realism with imbedded pedagogical goals is one of the crucial problems impeding the progress of Chinese children’s realistic films. In the early twenty-first century, some young directors have explored new representations. This chapter focuses on the new strategy which combines imagery and documentary narration in realistic Chinese children’s films in the New Millennium. Two feature films concerning the life of ethnic minorities, Mongolian ** Pong (2005) and River Road (2015), illustrate the practice of “figurative metaphor.” This chapter analyzes the cultural symbols of geographical environment, growth metaphors within the road motif, and the texture and rhythm of the film language resulted from the combination of the two types of narration.
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Notes
- 1.
Mongolian ** Pong won the Asian New Talent Award in the 8th Shanghai International Film Festival, the Golden Swan award, the Special Jury Award in the 22nd children, adolescent category in the Moscow International Film Festival, and the 11th China Hua Biao Film Award for excellent children’s film in 2005. River Road was nominated in the shortlist of the Crystal Bear Award in the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in 2015 and won the 16th China Hua Biao Film Award for excellent children’s film in 2016.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Professor John Stephens for his generous help and invaluable advice, for sharing his deep research on film with us, and for his considerate and professional editing.
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Tan, F., **ang, L. (2019). Dancing in Reality: Imagery Narration and Chinese Children’s Film in the New Millennium. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_16
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