The phenomenon of Chinese animation art through the prism of neorealism (on the example of the animated film “The lion boy”)

In the era of globalization and rapidly developing technology, China’s animation industry in its development faces a certain anxiety about the preservation of traditional national identity. This article describes the influence of neorealism on contemporary Chinese animation art. The study is an attempt to explore and analyze the features of neorealism as a current in contemporary Chinese animation through the example of the animated film “Lion Boy”. The appearance of the film (2021) has broken the dominant pattern of contemporary Chinese animated films with “mythological” themes and marked a new direction for the development of contemporary Chinese animation. The movie is based on a classical plot, but the characters are adapted to the norms of modern morality and ideas about aesthetics. From a certain angle, the movie is filled with modern pictures, the images of the characters are better depicted, they are more real, and the plot develops more dynamically. The protagonist is a character with a peculiar morality, who does not believe in prejudice. He meets the main values of modernity, which attracts the viewer. By analyzing the storyline, metaphors and analogies of the film, the author made an attempt to identify the problems of the development of Chinese animation and determine the features brought by neorealism to contemporary Chinese animation cinema. Neorealism filled animation with the consideration of the true relationship between ordinary people and society as a whole system, shifting the emphasis from mythological heroes, leaders to ordinary people. One of the results of the content analysis has become the characterization of a new direction of Chinese animation art in which human dreams and reality can coexist. The new animation resolves the contradiction between ideal and reality, the conflict between modern and traditional culture. Conclusions dwells upon the fact that it is possible to bridge the gap and conflict between “tradition” and “modernity”, “individual” and “society” that modern people face in their life world.