Bian Wentong, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Central Academy of Drama; Selected Scholar of the National "Four Batch" Talent Program under the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee; Leading Scholar in Philosophy and Social Sciences of the National "Ten Thousand Talents Plan" under the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee; Recipient of the Beijing Municipal March 8th Red Banner Medal; Council Member of the China Theatre Association; Representative of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles; Senior Visiting Scholar at Yale School of Drama; Director of the Career Development Department at the Asian Theatre Education Research Centre; Expert Member of the International Alliance of Stage Designers.

Prominent late Qing diplomatic envoys stationed abroad, including Guo Songtao, Zeng Jize, Zhang Deyi, and Dai Hongci, documented in their diaries observations and reflections on Shakespearean theatrical performances such as Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, and Macbeth on foreign stages. While expressing admiration for the magnificent theater architecture and captivating narratives, their accounts revealed fundamental disparities between Chinese and Western cultural paradigms and theatrical conventions. These records provide a distinctive perspective for understanding Chinese interpretations of Shakespeare through the lens of cultural collisions between late Qing China and Western civilizations.

Throughout the 120-year developmental trajectory of Chinese cinema, realism has consistently served as the spiritual backbone and foundational value of its creative practices. Across distinct historical periods, Chinese cinematic realism has demonstrated distinctive temporal characteristics: the 1930s exhibited a profound concern for the underprivileged; the 1940s transformed into visual narratives of national salvation; the post-1949 era elevated realism into collectivist hymns celebrating the new epoch; the reform and opening-up period shifted toward highlighting and breakthroughs in individual life values; and the new century has expanded into innovative explorations of pluralistic symbiosis. The lineage of realist spirit has continually adjusted its themes and perspectives in tandem with societal progression and temporal shifts. It not only documents the journey of social and epochal transformations through visual narratives but also persistently responds to the deep-seated needs of the populace for authentic representation.

Amid the wave of reforms in the 1990s, Fujian Film Studio produced several films set in Beijing or using Beijing as a political symbol. These films meticulously and vividly portrayed the social environment, urban landscape, personal experiences, and political connotations of Beijing at that time. A Beijing that blended tradition and modernity, a city rapidly developing in the tide of the era while its individuals were still adapting, and a Beijing that people outside the capital had to look up to—these diverse images of Beijing were constructed in these films. Through their imaginative depictions of Beijing, the films also sought a way to navigate the rapidly changing times with ease, demonstrating a conscious awareness of recording and participating in history.

In the Web 3.0 era, a series of Chinese historical documentaries have showcased the profound heritage of Chinese history and the spirit of the contemporary era through contemporary expression. Among them, the documentary China adopts a modern perspective to reflect on history, rationally synthesizes diverse viewpoints and historical materials, and guides viewers to contemplate Chinese attitudes toward the universe, nature, order, and politics. By using a “quasi-historical” approach, it recreates history, turning historical events into stories and giving historical figures depth. Advanced audiovisual techniques enhance the audience’s immersive experience, while a fusion of Chinese and Western styles constructs an imaginative space for Chinese history. The contemporary expression in this documentary represents a successful practice of the creative transformation of traditional culture.

For a long time, Hollywood films have dominated the international film market, establishing a narrative hegemony of Western culture. In response, domestic long-narrative films are striving to break this pattern.These films face significant challenges in international dissemination, such as heightened cultural barriers and the risk of narrative fragmentation across film series. The Trilogy of Fengshen has effectively addressed these issues by employing strategies such as optimizing narrative texts through direct translation and a “witness-like” storytelling approach, emphasizing the core storyline via back-to-back production, and constructing narrative space-time through its use of setting, visuals, and music. Additionally, it coordinates the pacing between standalone films and the broader series. As a result,the Fengshen series directed by Wuer Shan has gained a large number of overseas fans, providing valuable insights for the global dissemination of domestic long-narrative cinema.

The evolution of the model opera The Legend of the Red Lantern went through three stages. The first stage was the film There Will be Followers, produced by Changchun Film Studio based on the movie script of There Will be Followers of Revolution. The second stage saw the nearly simultaneous adaptation of the Peking opera There Will be Followers of Revolution by Harbin Peking Opera Troupe and the Shanghai Aihua Hu Opera Troupe's The Legend of the Red Lantern. The third stage involved the banning of the aforementioned two operas and the continuous revision and eventual standardization of the model opera The Legend of the Red Lantern. The evolution of The Legend of the Red Lantern not only reflects the political discipline of revolutionary modern drama from the secular to the sacred but also marks the beginning of a decade-long era of model opera creation in China’s cultural and artistic circles.

Luo Huaizhen's Huai opera the Golden Dragon and the Mayfly is one of the outstanding explorations of Chinese opera. The playwright's cruel revelation of the paradox of survival demonstrates a distinct modern stance; The tragicomedy style established by anti pattern writing is highly in line with the complex aesthetic needs of young audiences; The selective preservation of traditional opera genres in the play endows the work with a distinct operatic flavor. From the perspective of screenwriting studies, the absurd narrative strategy of The Golden Dragon and the Mayfly can reveal the way contemporary opera inherits classical opera in the process of modernization.

As a quintessential symbol of Silk Road cultural dissemination, the Sumu Zhe has undergone a conceptual transformation over a millennium, evolving from exotic music and dance, through the Dunhuang melodies and court music and dance, to the realm of musical tune and literary ci poetry. Existing research primarily focuses on the cultural value of its music and dance concepts, emphasizing its role as a paradigmatic example of cultural exchange along the Silk Road. However, the research has largely overlooked the process and internal mechanisms of its "Sinicization" following its introduction to China. This paper conducts an interdisciplinary analysis using Dunhuang musical scores, Tang and Song dynasty court music and dance documents, Jin and Song dynasty palace tune texts, and Yuan and Ming dynasty ci poetry works. It examines the specific process and mechanisms of this conceptual transformation through elements such as nomenclature, affiliation with palace tunes, literary meter, and concatenation procedures.

How can traditional plays be adapted to contemporary social values and become popular works of art? Taking the widely popular Puxian opera Chuncao Breaks into the Court as an example, we can observe that traditional plays, after being adapted by contemporary playwrights and successfully performed, are quickly transplanted and adapted by other opera genres. This process creates an "intertextual" dissemination trend that transcends time, opera genres, and cultures. Additionally, due to the advantage of its moderate script length, it is highly favored by local private theater troupes. From this, we can gain useful insights: contemporary local theater types should continue to take advantage of innovative adaptations of traditional plays, pay attention to the elaboration of the ideological value of the plays and the aesthetic commonality of the performances, and, with the convenience of new media, break down the barriers of communication between local theater types to promote the multi-dimensional and extensive dissemination of the plays.

In the 20th century, sinologists C. K. Arlington, J. I. Crump Jr., and Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak significantly contributed to the international dissemination of Chinese Xiqu (Traditional Chinese Opera). Each sinologist employed cross-cultural interpretive translation strategies, with their interpretations differing in focus according to their specific goals. The global spread of Chinese Xiqu unfolded in three stages: the reconstruction of its knowledge, the construction of its values, and its panoramic presentation. These stages offer valuable insights for contemporary efforts to promote Chinese culture abroad, emphasizing mutual learning among civilizations, the balance of integrity and innovation, and the unity of knowledge and action. Cross-cultural interpretive strategies are key to creating a new framework for Chinese culture’s global reach.

Jean Genet' s theatre tends to read its rituals in an existentialist manner due to its absurdist theatrical qualities. By combining the use of rituals in Genet' s theatre with Genet' s experience of discipline at the Mettray, Genet' s rebellious rituals at the Mettray are inter-textualized with the defiant rituals of his theatre works. From the perspective of the anthropology of ritual, the characters in Genet' s theatre, as socially marginalized people, attempt to enter a state of liminality and break away from the original social structure through rituals in an attempt to find the power of resistance, but all of them end up with the failure of the rituals. The meaning of ritual in Genet's theatre is not illusory, repetitive and depressing as understood by absurdist theatre, but a ritual of personal development that can never be completed. Genet' s theatre presents not a universal human predicament but a dilemma for those on society' s margins. Thus, Genet' s ritual theatre distinguishes itself from other ritual theatres in a ‘liminoid’ way and has a significant place in the genealogy of ritual theatre.

Maurice Maeterlinck, the Nobel laureate and leading figure of symbolist theatre, pioneered a "static theatre"that introduced a novel structure based on temporal suspense. This innovation marked a departure from the traditional event-driven suspense in drama, instead using time as the central narrative mechanism. By emphasizing the motif of waiting, Maeterlinck reshaped character dialogues, actions, and settings, heightening emotional tension and revealing the tragic dimensions of quotidian life. Drawing significant inspiration from Maeterlinck’s exploration of waiting, Samuel Beckett, a key playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd, inherited and further developed this temporal structure. Beckett infused it with humor and satire to portray the vacuous and despairing existence of modern humanity, likening it to a spinning top, thereby encapsulating an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

In October 1985, the musical Les Misérables premiered at the Barbican Arts Centre in a period marked by rising unemployment and widening economic inequality in the UK. As a story centered on the struggles of the poor, one might expect the production to have sparked intense socio-political responses, but this was far from the case. In contrast, 19th-century melodrama, often compared to Les Misérables, has been regarded as representative of the post-revolutionary spirit of its time. This discrepancy lies not only in their content but also in the vastly different organizational and production systems of the theatre in the two periods. Using an approach rooted in theatre studies, this article examines the tradition of 19th-century melodrama alongside the mega-musical Les Misérables, aiming to uncover the differing mechanisms through which they generate socio-political effects.

This article takes the opera The August 1st Uprising as a case study to explore the contemporary transmission mechanisms of red culture. The research demonstrates that the opera achieves a creative transformation of revolutionary historical themes through a populist narrative strategy and modern artistic expression.This practice provides a dual pathway—“value stability and formal innovation”—for the intergenerational inheritance of red culture, offering methodological insights for the modern adaptation of traditional cultural resources.

The dance drama Romance of the Three Kingdoms establishes a cultural memory transmission system based on "body narrative - media empowerment - memory reconstruction," rejuvenating the vitality of traditional culture through multidimensional artistic innovation. In terms of body narrative, the dancers use symbolic body language to transform Chen Shou's historiographical spirit and the traits of figures from the Three Kingdoms into tangible visual symbols, facilitating the concrete transmission of cultural memory through bodily gestures. Regarding media application, the production employs music, stage design, and multimedia technologies to create a unique immersive memory field that transcends time and space, thus enhancing contemporary perception of historical memory. In the dimension of memory reconstruction,breaks traditional frameworks through nonlinear storytelling, deepening contemporary interpretations of Chen Shou's historiographical principles via cross-temporal dialogues between him and historical characters. Simultaneously, by integrating localized Bashu elements and youthful expressions, and incorporating spatiotemporal folding and montage techniques, the drama builds a bridge for ancient-modern dialogue, enabling the creative transformation of historical memory through emotional resonance.

With the technological shift and innovation from the analog era of film to the digital age, the authors explore the transformation of the cinematic industrial landscape, including technological iteration, the evolution of aesthetic systems, and changes in emotional experiences. Based on historical tracing and theoretical reflection, the study further examines the closer connection between contemporary visual imagery and the commercial economy, specifically how attractions are used to generate commercial value. It also reflects on whether, amidst the overwhelming accumulation of spectacles in contemporary society, individuals lost in the authenticity crisis caused by the dominance of visual imagery can find a place beyond the alienating spectacle society—a return to true material reality.

The Animation Technology Forum, held during the "Luminous Future" Film Technology Section of the 15th Beijing International Film Festival, successfully convened to address the profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technology on China's animation industry and professional education. Centered on the theme of "Upgrading the Animation Industry and Innovating Education in the AI Era," the forum brought together representatives from academia, industry, and frontline creators to explore the restructuring of animation education paradigms through both theoretical and practical lenses. By proactively addressing the pressing challenges of educational transformation under the AI wave, the forum provided critical insights and strategic directions for advancing China's animation industry toward high-quality development.

The animated film Chang An produced by Light Chaser Animation Studios is designed for all age groups, featuring an epic theme suitable for all ages and reviving Eastern aesthetic traditions.It focuses on unique motifs within the context of Chinese society, such as national history, Chinese culture, and personal growth, showcasing a distinctive Chinese national animation style and connecting effectively its content with the diverse needs of audiences across all-aged groups. While the film contains some historical inaccuracies, it represents a bold attempt and breakthrough in the creation of domestic animation that appeals to all ages and embraces a national animation style.

The movie The Third Squad, based on a real and heart-wrenching criminal pursuit story, breaks away from the traditional “superhero” roles and sensational plot devices commonly found in police-crime narratives. Through meticulous character development and emotionally stirring storytelling, it successfully constructs an aesthetic community that draws the audience into a shared cognitive framework of pursuing truth. Within this framework, the film is rooted in China’s legal experiences while drawing on the structure of Western road films to align with global artistic expressions. It crystallizes the spiritual core of the Chinese nation and constructs a three-tiered aesthetic circuit of “fragmentation”, reconciliation, and mutual recognition between the individual and the state. This encourages audiences to consciously engage with the narrative, thereby achieving a profound sense of identification with individual and collective values, such as the unyielding pursuit of justice and enduring national spirit.

Christopher Nolan is an indispensable figure in the study of contemporary auteur theory, as his works often form a complete framework of commercial film anticipation from production to reception. His adaptation of Oppenheimer has sparked widespread global discussion, with the term “Oppenheimer moment” even being used to describe the modern individual’s dilemma between science and morality. Nolan extracts and reconstructs fragments of Oppenheimer’s life from the original text, creating a “negative of the negative,” while summoning the audience’s physical engagement through his unique visual representation. The alternating dual narrative threads intertwine personal storytelling with national-level narratives, revealing an intention to reshape the collective national psyche. The film continues Nolan’s consistent critique of technicism, reflecting contemporary social realities and offering an outlet for the anxieties of the era. The character portrayal, script structuring, and flexible use of genre elements in the film provide valuable insights and breakthroughs for the adaptation of biopics in the modern era.

In the context of ongoing innovation in media dissemination, various intangible cultural heritage performing arts are exploring new methods and pathways to engage with folk culture. Shandong local Xiqu, in particular, has pioneered the use of video art for dissemination and promotion, accumulating valuable creative techniques and practical experience. This article examines the use of popular visualization techniques in the dissemination of Shandong's local Xiqu genres, exploring the integration and innovation of their dissemination methods, analyzing the characteristics of their content, and investigating the exploration paths. The study aims to reveal the dissemination value and regenerative significance of this form, highlighting its essential role in the preservation and development of local Xiqu.

In the context of building up China's cultural strength in the new ere, cultivating innovative young artistic talents is crucial to enhancing the global influence of Chinese culture. Incubation platforms with multi-dimensional development frameworks for these talents have evolved into key mechanisms for fostering cultural and artistic innovation. Using the Sichuan Provincial Art Creation Promotion Center (Sichuan Art Fund Center) as a case study, this paper examines the development of a multi-tiered incubation mechanism for young artistic talents, addressing issues such as the disconnect between supply and demand and the underdevelopment of cultivation system. It proposes optimization strategies based on theoretical insights and practical experience, aiming to create a conducive environment for the growth of young artistic talents and support the advancement of Chinese theatrical arts.

This paper takes Qiang embroidery, a national intangible cultural heritage, as an example, and combines theories of subjectivity and communication to explore specific pathways for activating the subjectivity of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) inheritors and disseminating the “Beichuan Embroidery Women IP.” The “Beichuan Embroidery Women” are not only the main inheritors of the national ICH Qiang embroidery but also a vital force in promoting local rural revitalization through nearby employment. The creation of the “Beichuan Embroidery Women IP” by local governments aligns with the needs of protective development of ICH and advancing comprehensive rural revitalization. In the processes of marketization and mediatization, it is essential to fully utilize the subjectivity of ICH inheritors, build an all-media matrix to enhance the dissemination of the ICH brand, and promote the synergy between ICH protective production and rural revitalization.