The Revolutionary Task of Cinema: Modernism and Mass Culture in Shanghai and Buenos Aires A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Aleksander Sedzielarz IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Paula Rabinowitz May 2019 Copyright © 2019 by Aleksander Sedzielarz All rights reserved Acknowledgements To state it plainly, I cannot possibly thank everyone who played a part in bringing this work into the world. Throughout my research, I was helped and inspired by hundreds of people: friends, partners, mentors, colleagues, classmates, students, roommates, and relatives. While the thanks I give here is in no way exhaustive, I do want to leave a record of those whose help, support, and love brought me through the long work of completing this project. First of all, I am deeply grateful for the guidance and support of my advisor, Paula Rabinowitz. While Paula always encouraged me on my own independent path of writing and research, in my heart I follow Paula’s example in all I do as a researcher, scholar, and teacher. Paula embodies the kind of commitment to ethical scholarship and active involvement in public life that makes me excited to be involved in higher education. As a researcher and a writer, Paula has laid down a path of scholarship that illuminates history by bringing back to light ideas that have been forgotten, misplaced, and misunderstood. In all of our conversations—most recently, in long conversations over the phone—I have come to understand that the politics of our work is an everyday practice that requires close care and attention not only to historical sources but also, and equally, to human relationships. Thank you to Thomas Pepper for your friendship, support, and guidance. Our long conversations stimulated my writing and moved my mind to places I never imagined it could go. I always left your office with many pages of notes on films to see, music to listen to, stories to read, and essays to ponder. Thank you to Alice Lovejoy for being a generous and compassionate mentor: your confidence in me and your commitment to my work raised my spirits at the times in which I was the most disheartened. To Jason McGrath for your rigor, integrity, and kindness. Throughout this project, I have looked to Jason as a model of scholarship based in critical engagement to which I aspire, but I have also gotten to know Jason as a person with a rare kind of magnanimity based in a strong sense of the importance of human connection. Jason is a person who finds great joy in sharing good books, films, and music with students, colleagues, and friends. I owe many thanks to Jaime Hanneken. Dr. Hanneken helped me to greatly sharpen my thinking and my writing as I brought this project to completion. Thank you, Jamie, for sharing your vast expertise and for introducing me to insightful readings and original interpretations. Our lively conversations also rekindled my passion for comparative literature and critical theory. My great thanks also go to Amy Kaminsky for her mentorship in the early phases of my project. I owe much gratitude to the many faculty members at the University of Minnesota who have offered support and mentorship throughout my research for this project—and those who have generously guided me in understanding the world academic research and teaching. Thank you to Joseph Allen, Robin Brown, Cesare i Casarino, Juliette Cherbuliez, Michael Gaudio, Maki Isaka, Richard Leppert, Christine Marran, John Mowitt, Laurie Oulette, Tom Rose, Jani Scandurra, J.B. Shank, Graeme Stout, Shaden Tageldin, Rafael Tarrago, Ling Wang, and Zhen Zou. I also owe a deep debt of gratitude to the brilliant Professor Silvia López at Carleton College. Thank you Dr. López, for your excitement for my work and for your advice at pivotal points in my research. My thanks are also due to María Elena de las Carreras, Roy Bing Chan, Sarah Wei-ming Chen, Haydée Chiocchio, Andrew Jones, Ángel Prignano, Wang Zhuoyi, and Liliana Haydee Zuntini for their guidance on my project. I am grateful for the constant love and support of my family and those closest to me. Above all, I am thankful for the constant love and support of my parents, Frank Sedzielarz and Maija Sedzielarz. Although they passed long before I began this project, my grandparents were towering figures who inspired me from very early on in my life. To those family members who struggled so hard and gave so much so that we could all have lives of relative comfort and safety: Alberts Linde, Marija Greisko Linde, Stella Stulginskis Sedzielarz, and Frank Sedzielarz, Sr. Deep thanks go to my family in Seattle and Minneapolis: Carlos Arellano, Eloisa Brown-Arellano, Davina Brown, Ruth Eubanks-Brown, Romeo Brown, Zhanea Brown, Gemini Brown, Jenean Gilmer, Linda Molestina, Rita Molestina, Alija Triviski, Cecelija Triviski, and Liliana Triviksi. I also wish to express my deep gratitude to my amazing graduate colleagues at the University of Minnesota. You were a source of strength and happiness throughout this long and sometimes difficult period of my life. Thanks to Emily Fedoruk, Andrea Gyenge, Koel Banerjee, Rachel Schaff, Niloofar Sarlati, Roy Guzmán, Djiorde Popovich, Harshit Rathi, Hale Konitshek, Mikkel Vad, Wu Guanda, Soyi Kim, Brad Bellatti, Anil Chandiramani, Thorn Chen, Yuan Ding, Courtney Gildersleeve, Olga Tchepikova Treon, Matthew Tchepikova Treon, Ian White, Alexandra Leong, Joseph Sannicandro, Dzmitry Tsapkou, Cole Pulice, Joe Nelson, Jen Hughes, Tom Cannavino, Dag Yngvesson, Shana Ye, and Carla Manzoni. Many thanks are also due to my colleagues outside of the University of Minnesota that offered friendship and advice, especially Claire Class, Gina Elias, Karolina Pawlik, and Jiang Qingyuan. Last, but in no way least, many thanks to Mario Andrés Chalita, my long-time friend and collaborator in Córdoba, Argentina. Thank you to the many good friends in Minneapolis who have offered so much help and kindness along the way: Kate Gallagher, Derk Renwick, Sam Jirele, Claire Anderson, Brian Mitchell, Vince Bariuan, John Lewis Ford, and Marcela Sanchez. I owe much gratitude to the faculty, graduate students, and staff that showed me great hospitality as my hosts at the Department of Chinese Languages and Literatures at Fudan University in Shanghai, where I spent a year on a Fulbright Grant. I am especially grateful to my Fulbright advisor Dr. Zhou Bin for his guidance in my research in Shanghai. Dr. Zhou spent a great deal of time introducing me to sources and putting me in touch with local scholars. Much of this project has been inspired by our ii conversations. Many thanks to the archivists, librarians, and scholars that offered their time, energy, and intellect in aiding me in my research in China and Argentina. I would especially like to thank Virginia Castro and Horacio Tarcus at the Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas in Buenos Aires; to thank Sha Dan at the China Film Archive in Beijing; to give special thanks to Celeste Castillo at the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires; and to express my gratitude to the staff at the Jindai Wenxian Yuelanshi at the Shanghai Library. I also owe many thanks to the entire library staff at Biblioteca de Cine at La Biblioteca INCAA-ENERC in Buenos Aires—and with my particular gratitude to Adrián Muoyo and Julio Javier Artucio—for their tireless work in helping me track down out-of-print books and clippings from film periodicals from the early period of studio film production in Buenos Aires. Thank you, finally, to Li Wei at the Beijing Film Academy for sharing his experiences as a filmmaker and his insights on the history of film production in mainland China—Professor Li Wei’s guidance was crucial in the initial stages of my research on film in Shanghai. Finally, I want to acknowledge the funding that has been absolutely essential to my doctoral research. I am extremely grateful for the generous financial support of: The Harold Leonard Memorial Scholarship in Film Study; the U.S. Fulbright Program; Thesis Research Travel Grant program at the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota; The Council of Graduate Students Travel Grant; and the Graduate Research Partnership Program at the University of Minnesota. iii Miłość jest mgłą, która wytwarza się w głowie. Jeśli owa mgła opada na dół—na serce—następuje pogoda życia; jeśli pozostaje w głowie—pada deszcz łez. Henryk Sienkiewicz To My Loved Ones: Brown, Gilmer, Linde, Molestina, Sedzielarz, and Triviski iv Abstract This dissertation reconstructs the interconnected cultural histories of film and literature in Shanghai and Buenos Aires in the period 1927-1937. Through readings of previously untranslated texts on film form and film technology by Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938), Roberto Arlt (1900-1942), Mao Dun (pen name of Shen Yanbing, 1896-1981), and Xia Yan (pen name of Shen Naixi, 1900-1995), I identify a movement in cinepoetics common to Latin America and East Asia that mobilized local popular culture for global working-class political goals. My research investigates into key points in the history of the encounter between cinema and literature in these two cities and links internationalist movements in revolutionary politics with the vibrant film cultures emerging in these two cities—as seen through the eyes of each writer. Through a close textual, visual, and auditory analysis of film clips, film reviews, film-poems, reportage, film-inspired fiction narrative, screenplays, and soundtracks, each case study tracks the work of these writers as they participated in a transpacific intellectual network of anti- imperialist and anti-capitalist politics during the period of rising fascism, class conflict, socialist solidarity, and political upheaval in the years prior to the Second World War.