Cinematic Guerrillas : Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China

Winner, 2025 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, Society for Cinema and Media StudiesWinner, 2024 Moving Image Book Award, Kraszna-Krausz FoundationWinner, 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleHonorable Mention, 2025 Joseph Levenson Prize (post-1900), Association for Asian StudiesHow might cinema make revolution and mobilize the masses?In socialist China, the film exhibition network expanded from fewer than six hundred movie theaters to more than a hundred thousand mobile film projectionist teams.Holding screenings in improvised open-air spaces in rural areas lacking electricity, these roving projectionists brought not only films but also power generators, loudspeakers, slideshows, posters, live performances, and mass ritual participation, amplifying the era’s utopian dreams and violent upheavals. Cinematic Guerrillas is a media history of Chinese film exhibition and reception that offers fresh insights into the powers and limits of propaganda.Drawing on a wealth of archives, memoirs,