Long live the victory of Chairman Mao's route of revolutionary literature and art

Artist: unknown

Year: 1975

Publisher: unknown

Size (mm): 540x739

Condition: Excellent

The text under the slogan reads geming yangbanxi yingpian huiying (festival of revolutionary model operas and films)

From top, left to right, the stills are taken from:

Model revolutionary opera 'Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy'
Model revolutionary opera 'The Legend of the Red Lantern'
Model revolutionary ballet 'Red Detachment of Women'
Model revolutionary opera 'Shajiabang'
Model revolutionary ballet 'The White Haired Girl'
Piano and vocal accompaniment 'The Legend of the Red Lantern'
Piano concerto 'Yellow River'
Symphony 'Shajiabang'
Model revolutionary opera 'Seaport'
Model revolutionary opera 'Ode to the Dragon River'
Model revolutionary opera 'Red Detachment of Women'
Model revolutionary opera 'Raid on the White Tiger Regiment'
Model revolutionary opera 'Fighting on the Plains'
Model revolutionary opera 'Azalea Mountain'

Text at bottom reads Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Wenhuabu juban (held by the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China, 23 May to 23 June 1975)

Jiang Qing, often known in the West as Madame Mao, was the last of Mao's four wives and a noted film actress of the 1930s in Shanghai where she also joined the underground communist party. In 1938 she travelled to Yan'an and was introduced to Mao by Kang Sheng. Mao assured his fellow party members that Jiang Qing would be kept out of politics, and during the 1950s she acted as head of the film section of the party's propaganda department. She was appointed as deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group in 1966, rising to gain a seat on the Politburo in 1969 and exerting considerable influence over affairs of state. During the Cultural Revolution Jiang Qing became the leading figure in the Chinese arts and was responsible for the development of the 'eight model plays', in part an attempt to update what was considered the feudalistic and bourgeois Peking opera. The modern operas, ballets, films and performances recounted stories of revolutionary struggles from China's history, glorifying the army and common people's battle against class enemies. Their style was to embody the qualities of hong, guang, liang (red, shiny, bright) and portrayed subjects according to the 'three prominences', where good characters were illuminated at centre stage and the bad guys relegated to dark corners. As the most famous of the few officially sanctioned performances of the Cultural Revolution, the eight model plays dominated China's arts scene during this period and led to the popular saying, bayi ren kan bage xi (eight hundred million watched eight shows).

By the mid-1970s Jiang Qing had become an intensely unpopular character, regarded as acting on personal vendettas and grudges nursed over decades. Following her political alignment with the Gang of Four (Wang Hongyuan, Zhang Qunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and herself), the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, and an alleged coup attempt, she was arrested and subsequently sentenced to life in prison, commuted from a death sentence.