"China into Film is the first book-length study to look at contemporary Chinese cinema as a visual art and to illustrate the many ways in which it has been shaped by centuries of visual and literary tradition. Among Jerome Silbergeld's concerns are the use of allegory, the strategies employed by filmmakers in the face of state censorship, the role of female gender in Chinese cinema, filmmakers' continuing attachment to melodrama as a narrative form, and the influence of both Maoism and post-Maoism."--BOOK JACKET