Rural Projectionist

In the early 1980s the rural projectionists formed an important part of rural China life. Once villages received access to electricity so television became popular and change accelerated after young villagers left for the cities. The rural projectionists found they were showing films to smaller and smaller audiences.

In 2006, the Chinese government decided to subsidize mobile cinemas in rural areas in order to promote the practice, though asked each projectionist to play around 8,000 films in the rural area every year.

Video: Xu Jiye
Producer: D J Clark & Flora Yue