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Sun Mingjin and Early Chinese Documentary Filmmaking

Ying Zhu & Tongdao Zhang

Sun Mingjin: China’s John Grierson

The name John Grierson (1898-1972) will certainly echo among historians of

documentary film. Regardless of the controversial legacy Grierson left behind, his status

as a film theorist, producer and the leading figure of the British Documentary Film

Movement (1926-1948) is unquestionable. While the name Grierson immediately brings

us back to the early history of documentary filmmaking, the name Sun Mingjin (1911-

1992) remains obscure. The little known Sun was actually a pioneer Chinese

documentary filmmaker and educator with over a hundred film credits to his name. Sun

cultivated, in the 1930s-40s, what he termed “pedagogical” films, a Chinese documentary

film practice not unlike the ideologically motivated British Documentary Film

Movement. Sun’s documentaries marked a pinnacle of China’s non-fiction film

production in the 1930-40s yet his name is never mentioned in film history books in PR

China and his films remained virtually unknown to the generation of filmmakers growing

up during the PRC era. The historical snub has to do with Sun’s missionary affiliated and

Nationalist government sponsored film practice. Sun made all his films during his tenure

at the Jingling University (now University of Nanjing), one of the thirteen Chinese

Missionary Universities founded by the United Board for Christian Higher Education.

His films were mostly financed by the then Nationalist government. The Sun Mingjin-led

Jingling documentary film practice is a crucial yet missing link to our understanding of

the development of Chinese documentary filmmaking.

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The discovery of Sun’s films at the China Film Archive was an accident. Film

scholar Wang Tianjing came across boxes of 16 mm films without credits but with the

logo Jingling University. These anonymous films were identified as late Sun Mingjin

productions by Sun’s son in 2002. The Chinese Radio, Film, and Television Gazette

reported the news of the discovery of “China’s earliest films” in 2003. The China Film

Archive has since transferred 82 of Sun’s 112 films from 16 mm to video cassette. The

discovery of Sun’s films challenges the orthodox view of Chinese film history and is

particularly timely given that this year marks the 100 years of film production in China.

Our essay attempts to bring Sun Mingjin back into the spotlight of Chinese

cinema. Sun’s film practice during the Jingling era will be compared with John Grierson

and the British Documentary Film Movement. Chinese documentary films in the 1930s-

40s under Sun’s helm shared many of the same tenets with that of Grierson in terms of

their conception of the function of film as a medium, the subjects and themes they

explored, as well as the actual practice of filmmaking from financing to distribution and

exhibition. The comparison between Sun and Grierson provides a framework and

reference for our understanding of the significance of Sun Mingjin’s work. A

comparative study of Sun Mingjin and John Grierson further aims to parallel the

development of Chinese documentary film with that of documentary film globally. As

pointed out by Erik Barnouw, “the politicizing of documentary was not a Grierson

innovation but a world phenomenon, a product of the times.”1 The British Documentary

Film movement is not an isolated and regional incident as similar movements in the US

Russia, and other European countries have been well documented. The introduction of

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Sun Mingjin’s documentary film practice will bring to light the existence of such

practices in the Far East.

The Film Careers of Sun Mingjin and John Grierson

Both Sun Mingjin and John Grierson were born into religious families, with

Grierson of Presbyterian upbringing and Sun Christian upbringing. Sun Mingjin attended

the School of Science and Technology of Jingling University, with triple majors in

Chemistry, Electronic Engineering, and Physics. Grierson attended the University of

Glasgow, pursuing a degree in moral philosophy. While Grierson preached in nearby

churches on a regular basis during his Glasgow years, Sun immersed himself in a diverse

range of science and humanities courses, including Chinese Literature, Drama, Religion,

English, and Music. Sun’s religious upbringing and the indoctrination of a missionary

university did not make him a devoted church goer yet instilled in him a sense of civic

duty and moral responsibility. Both Sun and Grierson were elitists with a populist

inclination who believed in the individual fulfilling his or her social obligation and that

ruling elites had a commitment to inform and educate the uninformed mass. Both Sun

and Grierson had been grounded in an intellectual tradition in which art and cultural

production could only be conceived as purposive and functional, not ends in themselves.

Grierson was attuned to the political possibilities of the cinema by his study of Lenin,

who believed in “the power of film for ideological propaganda.”2 Russian cinema in the

1920s and the early work of Robert Flaherty proved inspirational to Grierson’s venture

into documentary filmmaking. Sun, on the other hand, was more attuned to the

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pedagogical potential of film as a tool for spreading scientific knowledge seen as the

route to the modernization of China.3

Given that Sun is much lesser known to the world than Grierson is, a certain

amount of biographical information about him is mandatory for our understanding of his

fascination with the power of film.4 Sun’s parents were the first generation of modern

university educated Chinese intellectuals who were exposed to a Western style science

education. They were particularly drawn to a physics course taught by a foreign professor

who introduced them to the technology of photography. The foreign professor further

used pictures to showcase exotic landscapes and costumes and peoples overseas. Sun’s

father, Sun Xishen was introduced to film in 1898 and remained faithful to the new

medium for the rest of his life. Xishen first screened films at a university campus in 1903

and was an ardent promoter of campus films. Sun Mingjing was introduced to both still

photos and moving images at a very early age, sharing the same obsession with film as

his father. Sun Mingjing was taken by his father to see a film on the Jingling campus for

the first time when he turned four in 1915. He shot his first still photo at the age of five.

Sun’s parents encouraged their son to absorb the world by looking at picture albums and

watching films.

In 1920, three students at Jingling put together a film on raising good cotton crops

under the guidance of their academic advisor, the US cotton crop specialist T.B. Griffing.

The film was instrumental in raising the standards and efficiency for cotton farming in

China during the time. Sun was impressed by this successful educational film initiative.5

During his high school years, he would often walk alone to the nearby auditorium at

Jingling University to watch imported silent films, fiction and non-fiction.

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Sun’s father was an old friend of Chen Yuguang, the then president of Beijing

Normal University who was actively involved in an educational initiative utilizing film

for pedagogical purposes put forth by Cai Yuanpei, the leading liberal educator of early

twentieth-century China and then the Chancellor of Beijing University. Chen met with

Cai in 1923, exploring ways to improve the quality of higher and secondary education in

China. In addition to the adoption of a modern Western educational system, the

appropriation of film on US campuses proved inspirational to both men. Chen Yuguang

was appointed the president of Jingling in 1926, the year when Sun Mingjing began to

explore his options for higher education, with a mind set for studying film. Given that

there was not a film major at any Chinese university at the time, Chen encouraged Sun to

study the science and technology of film, which were physics, chemistry and electronic

engineering.6 Sun entered Jingling a year later, majoring in physics, chemistry and

electronic engineering. 1930 saw the establishment of the Council for Film Education

(CFE) at Jingling. Sun was hired as a part-time secretary, responsible for collecting

documents and curating films. The same year Jingling began to translate into Chinese US

educational films made by the Kodak Company. Sun was predictably a regular at the

screening of Kodak films. One of the highlights in Sun’s tenure as a Jingling student was

a visit by Cai Yuanpei to CFE. Cai had become the Head of the Chinese University

Council, which replaced the former Ministry of Education. Cai gave a speech on the

importance of educational film in China’s modernization effort. Chen Yuguang

introduced the timid Sun to the larger than life Cai after the speech, praising Sun’s

potential in becoming China’s first film educator. Cai’s emphasis on the role of film as an

educational and scientific tool left a long lasting impression on Sun.

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Meanwhile, across the ocean a few years earlier, Grierson had gone to the United

States on a Rockefeller Scholarship in Social Science in 1924. He spent the next three

years studying the press, the cinema, and other instruments affecting public opinion. The

insights offered by Water Lippman’s seminal writing, “Public Opinion” proved

inspirational for Grierson’s desire to enlighten the mass via film.7 When he returned to

Britain in 1927 Grierson was deeply absorbed in the possibilities of film as a medium of

education and persuasion. To put to the test his ideas with an agency that might be

convinced of what the service films would render, he became Films Officer to the Empire

Marketing Board (EMB), sharing the position for a short time with Walter Creighton.8

Grierson made his first film, the now famous Drifters in 1929. The success of the film

made it possible for Grierson to further his ideas. Instead of directing other films, he

devoted his energies to building up a film unit and training its members. When the EMB

dissolved in 1933, the British documentary movement was too soundly established to

disappear.

A year after the disbanding of the EMB, Sun Mingjin graduated from Jingling and

was hired immediately as the special assistant to the Dean of the College of Science and

Engineering, Dr. Wei Xuerun, a US educated administrator. The same year Sun and Wei

collaborated on CFE’s first actuality film, Famous Sceneries in Shuzhou. Wei shot the

film and Sun edited the film and finished the postproduction. Wei founded the

Department of Educational Cinematography (DEC) in 1936, under the recommendation

of both Cai and CFE. Sun was appointed the deputy director and began his filmmaking

career. DEC became the production headquarter for all Jingling films and the training

ground for student and other aspiring young filmmakers. Wei was too preoccupied with

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his administrative duties at the college to attend to the daily business of running the

Department. Such responsibility was left to Sun who was closely involved with all

aspects of filmmaking, working as a cinematographer, director, editor, and sometimes

even as narrator. Sun appeared on camera as a tour guide for some of the travelogues and

as doctor or scholar for some of the science films.

Sun’s hands on approach in the production process differed from Grierson’s less

involved yet equally formidable presence. Grierson functioned more as a fundraiser for

his production unit, which trained young filmmakers who later became well known.

Unlike Grierson’s team members, people who worked under Sun seldom had the

opportunity to produce films independently. Major DEC members who worked under

Sun’s helm included Fan Houqing, Qiu Jinyi, Duan Tianyu, Jiang Chishou, and Qu

Yongxiang who assisted Sun in his various projects. As such, DEC produced an

impressive body of films yet not filmmakers. DEC made 112 films from 1934 to 1948,

among which more than half were shot and edited by Sun. Influential DEC films made

during the period include educational films such as Solar Eclipse, Air Defense, Gas

Defense, Female Physical Education, The Making of Light Bulbs, Coal Mining, and

travelogues such as The Building of a Village and Scenes of the Capital City. Solar

Eclipse became China’s first color film.9 DEC was renamed to the Motion Picture

Department in 1940 and was again renamed to the Audio Visual Center in 1947. The

name changes reflected the evolution of Sun’s understanding of the medium from picture

to motion picture and to motion picture with sound. Jingling later founded a certificate

program in electronic education, the first university level academic film program in

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Chinese history. Sun and his wife teamed up in offering a variety of production oriented

film courses.

The Japanese invasion into China’s east cost cities forced Jingling University to

move inland to Sichuan Province. During the exile, DEC made travelogues along the

way, filming the breath-taking landscape of Sichuan such as Ermei Mountain and Chuan

River. As the university settled into its temporary location in Chengdu, the capital city of

Sichuan, Sun made a trip to the US and spent one year there from 1940-41, studying

educational film production. Like Grierson, Sun was impressed by the achievement of US

documentary filmmaking. Yet unlike Grierson who was more taken by such films’

persuasivenee in addressing serious social issues, Sun marveled more at the technological

advancement of documentary film production. Upon his return to Sichuan in 1942, Sun

traveled to a neighboring province Yunnan, making more training films such as Air

Defense Industry and The Manufacturing of Engines. The same year he also founded a

film journal, Film and Radio Monthly, the first Chinese academic journal devoted to film

research.

After the Japanese were defeated in 1945, Jingling University made its way back

to Nanjing. Sun made several more films thereafter, including Transportation, Nanjing,

and The Front Line of Democracy. The Front Line of Democracy was the first Chinese

sound film in color. During his Jingling era, Sun was in charge of making one hundred

nineteen documentary films on topics ranging from travelogues to science, education,

industry, agriculture, public affairs, ethnic and folk culture, and religious activities. His

camera captured rare footage of Japan’s Nanjing atrocity, local village elections, Tibetan

Buddhist rituals, the Christian missionary efforts in China, etc. His films were the

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witnesses to the evolving political, economic, social, and cultural landscapes of China in

the 1930-40s. Sun was also responsible for translating into Chinese ninety-nine US

educational documentary films. More than half of Sun’s films were archived by the

Department of Education under the Nationalist government. The archived films were

screened widely across the nation during the period. Sun stopped making films after

1948. He joined the Beijing Central Film School, now the Beijing Film Academy (BFA)

in 1952, bringing along his whole Film Department at Jingling, which became the

foundation for BFA’s Department of Cinematography. Sun’s film career, indeed his life,

took a downturn during the politically tumulus PRC era. He was labeled a "rightist”

during the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957-58) and endured prolonged hardship during the

subsequent Cultural Revolution. He passed away quietly in 1992.

Grierson’s film career fared much better than Sun’s. After his tenure at the

Empire Marketing Board, Grierson worked for the General Post Office Film Unit from

1933 to 1937. He later moved to Canada, heading the Canadian National Film Board

(NFB) from 1939 to 1945. When he left the NFB in 1945, Grierson’s significant work

was over. Grierson's State affiliated film practice worked best in England during the

Depression and in Canada during the war, two periods when central planning was

inevitable and widely approved. Later, as governments grew less popular, Grierson's

stature diminished. He passed away quietly in 1972. While the legacy of Grierson has

loomed large, Sun has fallen into complete oblivion with the change of political regime.

Nation Building via Science or Ideology: The Political Philosophy of Sun and

Grierson

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The 1920s-30s was the period of stylistic experimentation in film, with film artists

of cubism, abstractionism, and surrealism exploring film form for their aesthetic

aspiration. Meanwhile, the US led commercial film industry cultivated narrative fiction

films for profit. Yet film was perceived by both Grierson and Sun as neither art nor

commerce but a tool for education, nation building, and moral and spiritual uplift. The

artistry and economy of the medium were secondary to the sociological function of the

medium. Grierson assigned feature films to the category of pop culture, which was

considered as unworthy of public support. He placed the documentary and informational

films in the realm of 'high culture', which expressed the beliefs, values, and ideas of the

elite class. Sun Mingjin approached film from a similar perspective, although with more

emphasis on the medium as a communication tool for practical training on science,

technology, and culture. Sun stated that “film is the medium for recording and

communicating culture; Film is an effective tool for education and (nation) building; Film

is a bridge for global peace; Film is the medium for people from the world to come

together.”10 Sun shares with Grierson the same distrust for narrative fiction film. Sun’s

penchant for non fiction films can be glimpsed by his comments on the nature of print

medium. He wrote that “we often associate books with masterpieces such as The Dream

of Red Chamber and Water Margins. Such an association is unfair because books are not

limited to fictions but can also be about physics, chemistry and various textbooks and

academic volumes. Books are, after all a form of medium.”11

Sun’s appropriation of film instead of print medium for pedagogical purpose

reflected his engineer’s impulse to always utilize the most advanced technological

invention to educational ends. The potential of film in recording motion with sound and

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color was particularly attractive to Sun. He was fascinated with the experimentation of

three-D film that promised to deliver the illusion of three-D to the audience. His DEC

team members at Jingling University shared the same fascination with moving images’

power of engaging audiences.12 To Sun and his film group, the most immediate utility of

film was its application to classroom teaching and popular education of scientific

knowledge. Sun drafted teaching manuals on how to utilize films for classroom teaching.

As for film’s pedagogical function beyond the confines of the classroom, Sun

emphasized film’s role in encouraging civil participation and the State’s war effort. In an

article published in Film and Radio Monthly, Sun noted that the mass would be better

motivated in the State’s various initiatives when they were better informed about the

needs of such efforts.13

China in the 1930s to 1940s saw a period of prolonged warfare, with the eruption

of civil war among various warlords followed by the Sino-Japan war and eventually the

Chinese civil war between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party. The Japanese

invasion in 1937 provoked strong nationalist reaction among Chinese intellectuals,

rekindling the main tenet of the May Fourth Movement two decades ago. The May

Fourth Movement in 1914 began as a patriotic outburst of new urban intellectuals against

foreign imperialists and warlords. Intellectuals identified the political establishment with

China's failure in the modern era, and hundreds of new periodicals published attacks on

Chinese traditions, turning to foreign ideas and ideologies. The renewed criticism of

traditional Chinese culture during the Sino-Japan war looked to the West for guidance in

science seen as the force behind Western progress. The appropriation of Western science

was accentuated when intellectuals discussed its relation to education. Growing up during

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the Republic era when the radical thinker Cai Yuanpei was the head of the University

Council, Sun Mingjin was well invested in Cai’s view that the cultivation of science leads

to the development of human knowledge and skills in observation, experimentation, and

reasoning that were essential to the modernization of China. Science therefore enables

educational effects to be enhanced in both scope and accuracy.14 Saving China by

promoting science became one of the driving forces of Sun’s filmmaking practice. In

view of the lack of science in traditional Chinese education, Sun made an effort to

promote Western sciences and technologies via film. Sun's faith in the role of science and

technology in nation building directly contributed to his fixation on films about such

matters. The weakened Chinese nation state was further attributed by the Chinese

intellectuals to poverty and lack of education in China’s vast rural areas. Efforts were

made to build schools and hospitals and to establish the basic infrastructure for civil

participation. Sun’s documentary film, The Building of a Village covered the political

reform at a vanguard village in the province of Hebei, showcasing the village’s

modernization effort in building a local school and hospital and introducing science into

farming, and in carrying out a local election.

Grierson emphasized film’s moral and ideological functions. A typical European

intellectual of the 1930s, Grierson belonged to a member of the generation born around

the turn of the century which grew to maturity during the period of post-war pessimism,

cynicism and disillusionment. Similar to Sun's era where traditional Chinese culture was

discredited, Grierson's period was one during which older European intellectual ideas lost

prestige and new ones took their place. As Peter Morris puts it, it was a period that gave

rise to such radically different approaches as aestheticism, formalism, art-for-art's sake

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and the rejection of Victorian sensibility on the one hand and the emphasis on social

purpose and the almost social-messianic role of the artist on the other hand.15 It was also

a period when fascism and communism shared many common ideological points of

origin and dogma in their repudiation of individualism and their subordination of

individual interest within the interest of a strong nation. Grierson subscribed to the

Hegelian notion of the state as the supreme embodiment of freedom. Grierson and Sun’s

film practice shared the same faith in the collective State and the same conviction for a

better society. Both Sun and Grierson believed in the documentary’s social purpose,

discounting entirely film’s commercial and entertainment value. Both Sun and Grierson

embraced the idea of a planned society and wanted to help citizens understand the benign

activities of the state. Sun’s team took their films to as far as the inland province of

Qinghai. Upon its relocation to the Shichuan province, Sun’s film team started a weekly

film screening ritual for the neighborhood where the university was temporarily located.

The Friday evening screening became the most celebrated event in the neighborhood. For

the war effort, Sun edited together short travelogues he made on various occasions

depicting famous Chinese scenery under a long film titled Return My River and

Mountain. The film encouraged young men to join the army in the war against Japan.

Sun was well informed of Grierson and the British Documentary Movement. He

published articles introducing Grierson and Grierson’s writings to the Chinese

documentary film community in the Chinese journal Film and Radio Monthly. Sun’s

articles commented on Grierson’s tenure at the Empire Marketing Board and the making

of his first documentary film, “Drifters.” Sun was particularly taken by Grierson’s ability

in manipulating images for emotional appeal. Sun’s writing showed his familiarity with

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major works of Grierson’s documentary units. Some of the Grierson films such as Night

Mail were screened at the Jingling University. Grierson’s articles were translated into

Chinese by Sun’s team members and published in Film and Radio Monthly.

Sun’s mobile outdoor exhibition effort was directly inspired by Grierson’s push

for non theatrical exhibition in his effort to circumvent the hostile theatrical exhibitors

and renters who considered long narrative films more lucrative. The predicament of short

films in general and of documentary films in particular in the UK in the 1930s was

exacerbated by changes in film booking and display practices. Competition between the

major film renters and cinema circuits led to the introduction of the double-feature

program. The display of two feature length films in the same cinema program left little

room for anything other than a newsreel. The market for short films was steadily

shrinking during the 1930s. The failure of the documentary film in commercial release

led Grierson and his colleagues to emphasize the advances they were making in non-

theatrical distribution. Grierson was aware that there was a greater total seating capacity

in schools and village halls, church halls, and community centers than there was in the

cinema theaters, which dramatically expanded film’s outreach potential. Grierson’s

article, “Picture Without Theater,” was translated into Chinese and published in Film and

Radio Monthly.16 Sun took Grierson’s idea further, abandoning all together the indoor

screening practice while traveling among the poor rural areas. Sun made a concerted

effort in bringing his films to the rural areas with illiterate peasants. In an article “Film

must go to the Village,” Sun and his team stated that film should not discriminate against

the illiterate peasants. In fact the accessibility of film to the illiterate population and the

flexibility of outdoor film screening made film a perfect tool for reaching the

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impoverished and undereducated rural area.17 Film would compensate for the lack of

medical funding by educating the local villagers on the basics of healthy living and for

the lack of educational funding by teaching subjects on a massive scale.

Subject and Style

It is worth noting that the British Documentary film movement emphasized the

creative treatment or poetic rendition of actuality whereas the Jingling films followed a

more realistic approach, emphasizing the importance of an authentic rendition in the

spirit of verisimilitude. Drifters aroused immediate interest because of both its subject-

matter and its technique. Grierson’s simple story of the North Sea herring catch brought

to the screen for the first time workday Britain. An admirer of Russian directors, Grierson

applied to his own film the principles of symbolic structure and dynamic editing evolved

by Eisenstein and Pudovkin. While rejecting formalism and the notion that the artist has a

personal right to express herself/himself as (s)he pleases, John Grierson was famously

quoted as noting that art is not a mirror but a hammer, "It is a weapon in our hands to see

and say what is right and good and beautiful, and hammer it out as the mould and pattern

of men's actions."18 To Sun though, film functioned more as a mirror than a hammer.

There is a distinctive style among all Jingling’s documentary films, which is the depiction

of reality with utmost precision and accuracy. Such might have something to do with

their different emphasis on the same subject matter.

Both Sun and Grierson loved to film blue collar workers and considered them the

real heroes of the society. During Grierson's youth, Scotland had massive poverty and a

great deal of social injustice. By the time he was a teenager, Grierson was actively

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involved in politics, concerning himself with the condition of the people. He helped

launch soup kitchens for striking workers. His first film Drifters was to valorize the ardor

and bravery of common labor. As Morris puts it, while Hollywood glorified the

exceptional, Grierson reveled in the beauty of the ordinary.19 Grierson's films are

dominated by images of industrial workers. These images are invariably those of

industrial workers contributing their share towards a larger collectivity. It is perhaps not

insignificant to recall, here, that one of Grierson's early essays was titled "The Worker as

Hero." Sun Mingjin was also fond of filming industrial workers but focused more on the

process of manufacturing and the hands that made the production possible. Sun shot

close-ups of hands rather than the faces and facial expressions of the workers who were

using the hands. Such is consistent with Sun’s emphasis on scientific and technological

education. The lack of interest in human faces and figures might suggest his aesthetic

linkage with the composition of Chinese traditional landscape painting which reduced

human figures to accessories. Unfortunately the emotional impact of Sun’s films was

diminished by his secondary treatment of workers. In a similar vein, Sun’s group made

thirty beautifully composed travelogues showcasing their love for nature. In these films,

the camera caressed the sensuous and exotic landscapes. Sun was more engaged while

filming nature than human figures. Sun initially planned to make a complete series on

major Chinese scenery. The plan was halted by the Sino-Japan war. Of over a hundred

films distributed by Jingling, travelogues and films depicting industrial processes

predominated. Sun’s films recorded the production of traditional artifacts and the

primitive stage of industrial development such as bridge building, dam building, mining,

electrical engineering, etc. The widely screened defense films “Air Defense” and “Gas

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Defense”, though made in an effort to aid the war against the Japanese invasion, were

more explanatory than propagandistic, focusing on teaching the mass how to protect

themselves against air raids and poison gas attacks.

The aesthetic achievement of Jingling’s documentary films is not as distinctive as

that of the British Documentary films. Though well-composed in each individual frame,

Sun’s films ultimately lacked deliberate structure and the matter of fact approach did not

help with emotional engagement. Sun seldom associated film with art or aesthetics and

his team members were all students of science and engineering. Film to Sun’s team was

the medium for scientific rather than aesthetic exploration. Sun’s later films paid some

attention to human figures and film’s overall emotional impact. The Frontline of

Democracy, for instance, juxtaposed rare footage of the struggle of the Jingling faculty

and students in their exile to Shichuan with that of Japanese air lift in Chongging, the

major city in Shichuan. The composition, structure, pacing, and sound all strived to

convey a sense of urgency as well as the triumph of the human spirit. At the same time

when Sun made Frontline, he also wrote an article on how to appreciate film,

commenting on, in addition to theme and techniques, the art of film.20 Sun wrote that the

appreciation of film art includes the appreciation of composition, editing, acting, sound,

lighting, and color.

It is worth noting that both Sun and Grierson’s films shared an optimistic outlook

towards whatever issues they explored. Social problems exist but are always solvable -

usually by the state but sometimes by some abstract notion of the "collectivity" as a

metaphor for the state. Class, class struggle and class conflict were concepts about which

Grierson and Sun had relatively little to say. Grierson considered class conflict essentially

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futile and notions of worker management impracticable.21 The same is true of other

"conflicts" that might disrupt the unity of the state. Such conflicts tended to be dismissed

or negated. As suggested by his contemporary, Edgar Anstey, Grierson thought that

social criticism could be dangerously negative and that the documentary was at its best

when it was being constructive and not critical.22 Sun did not comment on the issue of

social conflict yet the absence of DEC films that were critical of the Nationalist regime

speaks volumes. While it might indeed be the case that Grierson and Sun believed in the

power of a positive outlook, their non critical view of the State government also had a lot

to do with the way their films were financed.

The Political Economy of Documentary filmmaking

Both Grierson and Sun adopted the State as the primary sponsor of documentary

films. Financing and distribution of British documentary films during the time relied

upon support from government departments and agencies. It developed in almost

complete independence from the commercial film industry. Grierson definitely wanted

production to take place in officially controlled units. After initial hesitation about

distribution and exhibition outside regular commercial release, the entrenched hostility of

the commercial exhibitors pushed Grierson towards cultivating an alternative distribution

and exhibition system. During his tenure at the Empire Marketing Board, Grierson

established a non-theatrical distribution system on a small scale in conjunction with its

theatrical plans. Projectors were made available outside of cinemas. Likewise, Sun’s

production activities were supported by various government departments and agencies

under the Nationalist rule, both at the national and local levels. The university itself only

financed 10 projects. The chief financiers of Sun’s films included the State Bureau of

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Education, SB of Industry and SB of Agriculture, the Association of Educational Films,

and various local agencies including local school districts. Sun’s films were mostly

distributed by the State Bureau of Education (SBE) and screened at universities and

schools. Supplementing SBE’s distribution channel were the free public venues outdoors.

Jingling University also built a film library that was free and open to the public. The film

library further functioned as a film distribution unit. Films of national defense nature such

as “Air Defense” and “Gas Defense” were widely screened at various government

agencies during the war. Such points to the preeminence of Sun’s documentary films in

the overall development of China’s non fiction films during the period. In addition to a

handful of documentaries depicting Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the Northern Expedition made

by the veteran filmmaker Li Mingwei, the only alternatives to Jingling’s documentary

films were propaganda newsreels made by either the Nationalist or the Communist

Parties.23

The funding resources dictated both Grierson and Sun’s close alliance with the

State government and their films’ positive and non-critical view of the State. Working

class people were praised but their rights were not championed and their daily grind was

never depicted. Grierson made a conscious choice to disengage himself from making an

explicit party commitment. The political neutrality of Grierson’s films was attributed by

his ardent followers as a “refusal to be henchmen or mercenaries.”24 Ironically Grierson’s

establishment of a film production program at the Empire Marketing Board was an

attempt to “sell” the British Empire. The Empire was becoming at that time an object of

derision to much progressive opinion. Only those engaged in the Fabian search for

“national efficiency” continued to embrace imperialism as a species of necessary reform

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of “backward” societies. Grierson ignored the march of time. His Hegelian conception of

the state was the determining factor in his vision of the role and purpose of the

documentary film. It was an idealist conception of the State, not the State of political

parties, practical politics and cabinet government. The Griersonian documentary was

initially welcomed because it celebrated the state and encouraged identification with the

collectivity. It was later rejected when it came too close to the political process.

Likewise, Sun Mingjin’s alliance with Jingling University’s missionary effort and his

reliance on the Nationalist State agencies for funding has muted any critical voice in his

films. As a salaried filmmaker, Sun championed patriotism on behalf of the Nationalist

government and was aloof to the harsh living conditions of the ordinary Chinese during

the war-torn era. Perhaps the avoidance of human subjects in favor of natural landscape

and objects is not merely a personal preference but a calculated political choice. In short,

the theory of education as propaganda for the ends of citizenship training and national

building was not only a clear aspect of both Grierson and Sun’s philosophies; it

contextualizes the governmental support they received as well.

Grierson stopped field production after Drifters, focusing instead on fundraising

and mentoring young filmmakers. At the EMB and later the General Post Office Film

Unit, he showed a genius for choosing talented filmmakers, focusing their energies and

organizing the money to support them. Sun Mingjin, on the other hand, was in favor of a

more hands on approach and remained engaged in all aspects of the production process.

His close proximity with most of the DEC projects left little opportunities for other

filmmakers to emerge from under his shadow.

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Conclusion

Sun Mingjin’s films bore witness to the evolving political, economic, social, and

cultural landscapes of China in the 1930-40s. Among his oeuvre were China’s first color

film Solar Eclipse (1936) and the first sound film in color, The Frontline of Democracy

(1947). Sun also founded China’s first academic film program and journal. Sun

Mingjing’s Jingling group was the only group making a concerted effort to develop

documentary filmmaking in China paralleling the global documentary film movement.

Sun’s group further extended the spirit of John Grierson and Pare Lorentz in his exercise

in national projection. Sun’s documentary films are a significant part of world

documentary film history. British and the US documentary films were frequently shown

in China in the 1930-40s amidst the war effort. Jingling University’s educational films

were the product of the time. Jingling itself is the by-product of the US missionary effort.

The president of the University and the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering

had their academic training in the US. The development of Chinese documentary film

became isolated from the global documentary community from the end of Jingling group

to the 1980s.

The Chinese documentary movement under Sun Mingjin’s helm shares some of

the same spirit with the British documentary film movement. Both Sun and Grierson

were the first filmmakers to escape the tyranny of the box office by persuading

governments and corporations to sponsor films. They both embraced the idea of a

planned society and wanted to help citizens understand the benign activities of the State.

This worked best in England during the Depression and in China during the war, two

periods when central planning was inevitable and widely approved. However, it would be

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misleading to draw too many analogies between Sun and Grierson. Despite parallels in

commitment to pedagogical films of social purpose, the cultivation of non commercial

funding and distribution, the disdain for formalism and fiction films for their association

with mindless entertainment, there were significant differences between the Grierson

group and the one assembled by Sun Mingjin. Sun was more concerned with informing

and educating the mass in science and technology whereas Grierson was more concerned

with the nature of the modern world and its implication for citizenship, both globally and

locally. While Grierson imposed no rigid pattern on the directors who worked under him,

Sun was more involved in shaping both the subject and style of the DEC films at the

Jingling University. Much linked to Sun’s fascination with how things work in the natural

and mechanical worlds, his films foregrounded natural and manufactured objects and the

process of manufacturing, rather than human subjects and human agency. Grierson, on

the other hand, made workers the centerpiece of films under his leadership and glorified

the working class for moral and spiritual uplift. Stylistically, Sun’s films were plain,

adhering to the realistic principle in their matter of fact approach. Grierson was interested

in how images can be manipulated for ideological persuasion. The most significant

difference between Sun Mingjin’s Jingling University film practice and Grierson’s

British Documentary film practice lies in the latter’s transborder presence by assuming

his leadership position beyond the confines of the UK and by the sheer volume of his

writing in articulating his political philosophy of filmmaking. Sun Mingjin’s DEC

documentary film practice operated at a much more compact scale and Sun was too

preoccupied with the actual practice of filmmaking to explore the ideas of filmmaking.

Sun’s Jingling based documentary film practice hardly made an elaborate film

movement.

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As a first stab at academic research on Sun Minging and his documentary film

practice, this article essentially relies on Sun Mingjin's own account of what he was

trying to do and what he accomplished. A certain amount of caution should be heeded in

taking the word of both men regarding their goals, success, and even the kind of people

they were. Our willingness to take the word of Sun and his associates and family

members regarding his goals and his success can be seen as a first archeological effort in

unearthing a long forgotten figure in the history of Chinese documentary film practice.

Any future research should move beyond taking Sun and his films at face value. Future

research will also benefit from an expanded comparative angle that factors in the

development of documentary filmmaking in Russia, the US, and elsewhere.

1 Erik Barnouw (1974), Documentary: A History of the non-fiction Film (New York: Oxford University Press), p.100. 2 Quoted in Richard Taylor (1979), Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London: Croom Helm Press), p. 44 3 J. Grierson, “Film Propaganda,” July 1930, PRO BT61/40/1 D.O.T. E12251 B. Paper no. 14. 4 The biographical information in this paragraph was relayed to the authors by Sun Mingjing’s son, Sun Jianshan as his father’s recollection. 5 The information was relayed to the authors by Sun Mingjing’s son, Sun Jianshan as his father’s recollection. 6 The information was relayed to the authors by Sun Mingjing’s son, Sun Jianshan as his father’s recollection. 7 Forsyth Hardy (ed.) (1966) Grierson on Documentary, rev. ed. (London: Collins), p. 14 8 Forsyth Hardy (ed.) (1966) Grierson on Documentary rev. ed. (London: Collins), p. 13 9 In writing off entirely Sun’s work, the official PRC film history books have insisted on the debut of the first Chinese color film being in the year 1953. 10 Sun Mingjing, “What is Film,”, Film and Radio Monthly, 1947, Vol.5, #10 11 Sun Mingjing, “What is Film,”, Film and Radio Monthly, 1947, Vol.5, #10 12 Sun Mingjing, “What is Film,”, Film and Radio Monthly, 1947, Vol.5, #10 13 Sun Mingjing, “Film and Mass Motivation,”, Film and Radio Monthly, 1942, Vol.1, #5 14 Lizhong Zhang, “Cai Yuanpei,” Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, vol. XXIII, no. ½, p.145-157 15 Peter Morris `Re-thinking Grierson: The Ideology of John Grierson'. In T. O'Regan & B. Shoesmith eds.

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History on/and/in Film. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia, 1987. 20-30. 16 Li Zhujin, “Tomorrow’s Actuality Films,” Film and Radio Monthly, 1942, Vol.5, #3 17 Jiang Zhenghua, “Film and Mass Motivation,” Film and Radio Monthly, 1942, Vol.1, #7&8 18 Quoted in Peter Morris `Re-thinking Grierson: The Ideology of John Grierson'. In T. O'Regan & B. Shoesmith eds. History on/and/in Film. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia, 1987. 20-30. 19 Peter Morris `Re-thinking Grierson: The Ideology of John Grierson'. In T. O'Regan & B. Shoesmith eds. History on/and/in Film. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia, 1987. 20-30. 20 Sun Mingjing, “How to Appreciate Film,” Film and Radio Monthly, 1947, vol. 5, #10. 21 Peter Morris `Re-thinking Grierson: The Ideology of John Grierson'. In T. O'Regan & B. Shoesmith eds. History on/and/in Film. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia, 1987. 20-30. 22 Peter Morris `Re-thinking Grierson: The Ideology of John Grierson'. In T. O'Regan & B. Shoesmith eds. History on/and/in Film. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia, 1987. 20-30. 23 Northern Expedition was a military campaign from 1926-28 by which the Nationalist party, with the aid of the Communist party, overthrew the warlord backed Beijing government and established a new government in Nanjing. Li Mingwei (1893-1953) was one of the founding figures of Chinese cinema who became a member of Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary society in the 1900s. Li formed Minxin Film Company in 1921 and produced documentaries about Sun Yat-sen and his revolutionary activities. Many of Minxin’s feature films produced between 1920s-40s have become Chinese classics. 24 Paul Rotha (1966) Documentary Film, London: Faber.