Marketing Rebellion: The Chinese Revolution Reconsidered

The reenacted newsreel The Chinese Revolution (1912), partially preserved in the Library of Congress, has long been misattributed to American immigrant filmmaker Benjamin Brodsky. Careful reconstruction of the film’s production and circulation history reveals that it was made in China in 1911 by M. Pathe, a Japanese film company which, through its founder Shokichi Umeya, had connections to Yat-sen Sun. Analysis of the US-based distributor’s promotional campaign demonstrates that this unusual early trans-Pacific import fostered the independent film market of the early 1910s while articulating with emerging American discourses about a modernizing China. This reconsideration argues that The Chinese Revolution was a pioneering media commodity with economic and political impact on both sides of the Pacific.