QIAN, Ying. 2024. Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China. New York: Columbia University Press

English-language monographs on the topic of Chinese documentary cinema, few and far between just a decade or so ago, now constitute a substantial body of literature, to which Ying Qian’s 2024 book, Revolutionary Becomings, is a recent and welcome addition. Revolutionary Becomings focuses on the history of Chinese documentaries before the advent of independent cinema in the 1990s, shedding light on various productions spanning almost the entire twentieth century. Far from merely providing an ...