As part of the Orphan Film Symposium session Moving Image Technologies at Work, in Asia, NYU scholar Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang and Dino Everett, archivist at the University of Southern California, present “Thinking Out of Sync: A Demonstration of the Chinese Obsolete Film Format 8.75mm.” Using a newly refurbished machine, they will project 8.75mm film prints of News Report ’72 No. 45 (新闻简报72年45号) and a 1973 production from the Shanghai Animation Film Studio.
Rural Film Projection: China’s 8.75mm Cinema Revolution
by Chenghao Wen and Yangyang Xu (NYU Cinema Studies)
In the annals of Chinese cinematic exhibition history, there exists a uniquely Chinese motion-picture film format, measuring 8.75mm wide. The narrow-gauge strips were cheaper to produce and easier to transport than 35mm prints used in theaters. From the mid-1960s, the government deployed mobile projection teams to show films to the rural populace, who welcomed it in mountainous areas, remote islands, and distant borderlands.
8.75mm and Super 8mm
In 1965, the Cinema Bureau of the Ministry of Culture sought to break away from the limitations of Soviet equipment, designing its own lightweight projectors for the conventional 8, 16, and 35mm film formats. But plans for one of the 8mm screenings were put on hold. In the U.S., the Kodak company began selling its “Super 8” film and equipment. In November 1965, the First Ministry of Machine-Building Industry and the Ministry of Culture convened a national film technology conference in Beijing. This launched a new round of technical analysis on the choice between 8.75mm and Super 8mm. Some experts argued China’s new projectors should follow international standards. Others said the independently developed 8.75mm film should be adopted. Its effective frame area was superior to that of Super 8.
The 8.75mm format began production in China thereafter. Since the state wanted the films it took to villages to have dialogue and music, the requirement for a soundtrack on the film copy made the technical specifications of 8.75mm the final decision. Also, the area of 8.75mm film is slightly wider pitch between perforations compared to Super 8, which allowed for a larger screen projection area for the viewing environments for 100 to 200 people that was required in China at the time.
In January 1966, China’s Science and Technology Commission issued a directive to trial-produce 8.75mm and 16mm film technology equipment. Provincial and municipal film machinery manufacturing units, spurred by the news and supported by local governments, zealously commenced the trial production of 8.75mm projectors. By February, China Research Institute of Film Science & Technology, in collaboration with the Beijing Film Machinery Factory, guided by the prototype of an 8mm silent projector provided by Vice Minister Shen Hong in 1965, succeeded in manufacturing an 8.75mm projector.
China supported the 8.75mm format for two decades, phasing-out production in 1986. During the initial four years of development, numerous local brands of 8.75mm projectors emerged. By 1974, a stockpile of 2,350 projectors produced in Hunan, Shanghai, and Dalian, along with 16mm projectors from Nanjing and Ganguang, had accumulated in factory warehouses. Throughout these two decades, labs processed more than 200 million meters of black-and-white stock and 5.6 billion meters of color.
The advent of 8.75mm film marked the end of an era where rural China was devoid of cinematic entertainment, significantly enhancing access for the rural populace. Reflecting the tenacity of the 1960s, more than 50,000 projection teams nationwide showcased the spirit of Chinese technological workers in the film machinery front, who developed projection and production equipment and cultivated a technical workforce in the film industry.
In the 1970s the mass production of projectors, enabled projection teams to work within communes and production brigades throughout he country. By the end of the 1980s, hoever, the landscape of rural film evolved from mobile projection units to the establishment of township cinemas. These offered better seating, indoor viewing, and a more comfortable and varied film-watching experience. But the role of the rural and community projectionist, and the custom of community film screening was retained, and continues digitally to this day.
Presentation and Projectionists
Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang discusses the history of the format, while Dino Everett delivers expertise about the technical specifications of 8.75mm projection.
Newsreels and the work of projectionists plays a crucial role in early socialist China. The era’s newsreels typically ran ten to twenty minutes, distributed as a bi-weekly national edition. Additional footage could be added for region-specific screenings.
Although little has been published in English about the gauge, a recent book by scholar Chenshu Zhou, Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, shows that projectionists in socialist China were tasked with not only showing newsreels. They also engaged audiences through slide shows and live performances as pre-screening propaganda. Some projectionists, Zhou writes, had even become subjects of the newsreels they projected, like the renowned Three Sisters Projection Team, which emphasized women’s empowerment in promoting socialist ideas.
At this symposium, Zhang and Everett also project a reel from the animated film Little Trumpet Player (小 号 手). Zhang purchased the print at an antique market on the outskirts of Beijing. She acquired the 8.75mm projector from Xianyu, a second-hand sales website. Directed by established animators Wang Shuchen and Yan Dingxian, Little Trumpet Player is a classic propaganda tale about the making of a patriotic war hero. A young orphan joins the Red Army and through education and combat grows into a valiant warrior. In its 8.75mm form, the ideological propaganda piece was widely distributed in China’s rural areas.
Copies of these films circulate in other media, including Little Trumpet Player on this little-watched YouTube channel. But watching them projected with an original 8.75 machine is rare, particularly outside of China. Experiencing the phenomenon on the extra large screen at Museum of the Moving Image is special indeed.
p.s. “So this is the culmination of a good 15 years of desire,” he wrote — three years before the Orphans 2024 projection. “8.75mm Chinese Projector,” Dino Everett channel (@aytab), May 26, 2021.
“This is day one testing it out and realizing the on/off switch for the sound causes a bunch of noise and needs replacing, but other than that it works great. Very similar in design to a Eumig but seriously stripped down. No rewind. . . . ”
Sources consulted
Chenshu Zhou, Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China (University of California Press, 2021),
Shu-Wen Lin, “The Relationship Between Cultural Policy and Technology Obsolescence: Introducing the History of 8.75mm Film in China,” research paper, Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, New York University, 2014.
Guigeng Yu, “Looking back at the Unique Phenomena of the History of Chinese Film — 8.75mm Film,” in Advanced Motion Picture Technology [现代电影技术], (2005). Link is to the original Chinese text.
Relatively few published sources exist on the subject of 8.75mm film, but an open web search for the term leads to a variety of self-published information, documents, and photograph. For example, this website provides information on the second-hand sale of projectors.
Our NYU classmate Sixuan Li’s forthcoming thesis, “Small-gauge Film Formats in China: Their History and Current Archival Conditions,” also breaks new ground on this subject.
We also consulted Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang’s proposal submitted to the Orphan Film Symposium.