Abstract: Employing the methods of documentation and logical analysis, the paper investigates and analyzes the history of sports movies of modern China, with the results showing that in war times, modern China's sports movies experienced complex and hard development. While pursuing art, modern China's sports movies had to compromise to commercial capital, audience interest, government control, white terror and social environments, which, to some extent, forced them to give up the essence of pure pursuit. But in those special times contexts, sports had its value and historical mission of encouraging and enhancing people's morale. In addition, there were very similar claims between sports and films in art, expression, personality, time and space transformation and so on. In the history of modern China's movies, sports movies took up their own place with many classical works, playing a positive role in public opinion guidance and cultural propaganda.

Key words: sports movies, modern China, shadow play, documentary film, feature film, educational film