August First Film Studio
film studio of the Chinese People's Liberation Army
August First Film Studio, or Bayi Film Studio (Chinese: 八一电影制片厂; pinyin: Bāyī diànyǐng zhì piàn chǎng), is the only military film studio in China. Founded on August 1, 1952, it is a comprehensive film studio with the production capacity of feature films, battlefield documentaries, military education films, news documentaries, national defense scientific research films, TV dramas and other films. The unit's main business area is located in Fengtai District, Beijing, and consists of Wang Zuo Film and Television Base and Hubei Film and Television Base.
History
In March 1951, with the approval of the Culture and Education Commission and the Central Military Commission of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, the Military Education Film Studio of the General Political Department of the Central Military Commission was launched to provide the People's Liberation Army with its own documentary film production facilities following the best practices in the world.
On August 1, 1952, PLA Day, the studio was officially opened and named the People's Liberation Army Film Studio (Chinese: 解放军电影制片厂) in honour of the PLA's silver jubilee. In the early days of the studio, it mainly produced military educational films and news documentaries. In 1955, the studio was granted funding to produce feature films on its own, breaking a brief monopoly by the China Film Group Corporation. From then on, PLA Film and CFGC carried a duopoly in the Chinese film industry until the 1990s.
In 1956, it was rebranded as August First (Bayi) Film Studio.
The 1963 August First Studio film Serfs is a movie depicting the fictional story of a young man named Jampa who grows up as a serf in Tibet and takes refuge as a monk in a monastery.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “August First Film Studio” as film studio of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as film studio of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10872932. VIAF identifies the subject as 158605750. The Library of Congress control number is no2001095244. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1951, 1955 and 1956.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “August First Film Studio” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.