Ink Wash Animation: 1988

In the 1950s, Chinese animation was made in Shanghai under the #Maoist government. Animators at #ShanghaiFilmStudio, which was funded and owned by the government, were tasked with creating cartoons for children. The artists educated themselves by studying animated films from America, Japan and Russia.

“We learned everything we could from them, and they all influenced us to a certain degree,” recalled Duan Xiaoxuan, a pioneering camerawoman at the studio. “But how were we supposed to make something actually Chinese?”

Led by director Te Wei, the #Shanghai animators set about solving that problem. The political winds were in their favor in the mid-1950s. #Inkwash painting was in vogue, after being denounced just a few years before. What was praised or banned under #Mao could change at a moment’s notice — suddenly, the “opponents of traditional ink painting were considered enemies of the nation,” wrote historian Daisy Yan Du.

Focusing on traditional stories, the #上海 made cel animation inspired by Peking opera, and puppet films based on folktales. As time passed, and as the Shanghai Animation Film Studio came into being, the first ink-wash film was born — Little Tadpoles Looking for Mama (1960).

Sources:

Feeling of the Mountain and Water (1988)

Animation Obsessive Substack, https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/animating-chinese-ink-wash-paintings

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