The Making of “Asian Cinema”: The 1957 Asian Film Week and China’s Film Festival Diplomacy

Following the Bandung Conference,the 1957 Asian Film Week played a crucial role in China’s cultural diplomacy towards postcolonial Asian and African nations.With the network it established for inter-Asian film production,distribution,and circulation,the 1957 Asian Film Week not only promoted a transnational Asian identity,but it also actively developed the idea of anticolonial cinema,leading to significant advances in film theory.In the meantime,the Asian Film Week experimented with the Cold War conventions of film festivals in an attempt to create a platform that emphasized equality and inclusiveness among Asian nations,with the goal of enhancing China’s diplomatic ties with these nations and shifting the balance of power within the “new Asia.” With its making of “Asian cinema,” the 1957 Asian Film Week advanced the notion of Asian-African solidarity in the post-Bandung era,and due to its affiliations with the Afro-Asian Film Festival (1958—1964) and the Third Cinema movement,it also made a lasting impact on the history of global cinema.