Abstract:  In Chinese rural films many symbolic rural-old-father images were created to elaborate various rural social relationships, human-land and rural-urban relationships. In the 1980s’ films, rural-old-father images departed from the wise-old-man cultural archetype, changing from heroes of revolution and construction to backward, conservative and need-to-be-enlightened “illiterates”. The symbolic images were made more prominent as the visual narrative was enhanced while language narrative was decreased. As the center of the images of rural-old-fathers, “bodies-in-space” reflected various human-environment contrastive relationships, extending to gender, class, individual/collective, public/private dimensions. Three types of images were portrayed as starting points of analysis: bitter portraits, “bodies-in-workspace”, and “bodies-in-interpersonal space”. Different from Chinese visual tradition, portraits of rural fathers shared such features as large areas of shadow, silence and hidden facial expressions. “Bodies-in-workspace” were images emphasizing bodies in work, while ignoring individual subjectivity. “Bodies-in-interpersonal space” placed “father-son”relationship in a reversed “up-down” spatial one, depicting the rural old fathers as onlookers without discourse power in the opposite position who needed to be enlightened by their sons. “Bodies in space” as symbols facilitated the portrayal of “rural old fathers” as a mob of illiterates, visualizing relevant culture, experience, ideologies and values into the narrative of enlightenment, and as “silent work machines” who contributed to demarcation of the rural-urban boundaries, thus setting examples for cultural geography on the screen. 

Key words: the 1980s’ Chinese films, rural old fathers, bodies-in-space；the image as a mob of illiterates, visual narrative