This three-volume set charting the general history of Chinese film organizes, analyses, and explains the different stages of development of Chinese film from 1896 to the present day.

It includes analysis of films, filmmakers, historical elements of film style, as well as a review and elaboration of major events, while examining the intersection between film ecology and cultural ecology in every historical period, deploying the results of contemporary research from both China and abroad. Beginning with the film as text, it proceeds through formal analysis and comparison, makes connections with the social background of the work and the filmmakers, and narrates a continuous history of Chinese films and filmmakers and their world. The purpose is to deduce the historical basis for the evolution of film as art, political, philosophical, and literary trends, and to understand and explain how the current tradition of Chinese film has been gradually constructed from the past.

This set will be a essential reading for scholars and students in film studies, Chinese studies, cultural studies, and media studies.