This course is a general elective course for art students in universities. Centered on the theme of “Two Ways of Telling One Story,” the course selects ten classic works of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and their film adaptations for comparative study. The course is structured into four sections: “Youth and Love,” “History and Life,” “Poetry and the Distant Horizon,” and “Traces of Writers in Film.”
Through these sections, the course explores the historical formation and rich connotations of literary classics, helping students understand narrative strategies, character construction, and thematic implications within literary texts. It also analyzes how films transform and recreate literary works through cinematic language, color and lighting, visual imagery, and narrative adaptation, while examining the contemporary contexts and value reconstruction involved in film adaptations.
Through the dialogue between text and image, the course guides students on a journey across a century of Chinese history, enabling them to experience the human world, human life, emotions, and human nature within the process of modernization. At the same time, it encourages exploration of key themes such as enlightenment and revolution, tradition and modernity, gender and the body, memory and trauma.
