Paper-cut animated films are a kind of cartoons unique to China, which applies Chinese folk handicraft of paper-cut into the design of cartoon films. Pig Bajie Eat Watermelons, directed by Wan Guchan in 1958, is the first Chinese paper-cut film. The film features lively color and modeling of folk paper-cut flavor, making the audiences find everything new and fresh and adding a new kind of film to Chinese cartoon films.
Following Pig Bajie Eat Watermelons, several other paper-cut animated films came out
in succession, including Fishing Boys, The Mad Monk Plays Cricket Fight, Panax Moppets, and so on, consolidating and developing the film type. Golden Trumpet Shell, directed by Wan Guchan in 1963, pushed the paper-cut animated films to a new height. The film won the Lumumba Award at the Third Asian-African Film Festival held in 1964 in Indonesia.
After the 1970s, the films such as The Fox Hunts The Hunter and The Fox Sends Grapes, etc., with famous painter Han Meilin serving as their designer of fine arts, were characterized by distinct styles and refined paper-cut flavor. Among them, The Fox Hunts The Hunter won the Best Fine Arts Award at the Zagreb Film Festival in Yugoslavia in 1979.
(chinaculture.org January 18, 2004)
