Rui Zhang
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098855
- eISBN:
- 9789882207523
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098855.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Beginning first as a case study of Feng Xiaogang, this book explores Chinese film history since the early 1990s in terms of changes in the Communist Party's film policy, industry reforms, the ...
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Beginning first as a case study of Feng Xiaogang, this book explores Chinese film history since the early 1990s in terms of changes in the Communist Party's film policy, industry reforms, the official promotion of Main Melody films, and the emergence and growth of popular cinema. The image of Feng that emerges in the book is of a filmmaker working under political and economic pressures in a post-socialist state while still striving to create works with a personal socio-political agenda. In keeping with this reality, the book approaches Feng as a special kind of film auteur, whose works must be interpreted with attention to the specific social and political context of contemporary China.Less
Beginning first as a case study of Feng Xiaogang, this book explores Chinese film history since the early 1990s in terms of changes in the Communist Party's film policy, industry reforms, the official promotion of Main Melody films, and the emergence and growth of popular cinema. The image of Feng that emerges in the book is of a filmmaker working under political and economic pressures in a post-socialist state while still striving to create works with a personal socio-political agenda. In keeping with this reality, the book approaches Feng as a special kind of film auteur, whose works must be interpreted with attention to the specific social and political context of contemporary China.
Stephen Teo
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098152
- eISBN:
- 9789882207110
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098152.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
A Touch of Zen is one of the first Chinese-language films to gain recognition in an international film festival (the Grand Prix in the 1975 Cannes Film Festival), creating the generic mould for the ...
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A Touch of Zen is one of the first Chinese-language films to gain recognition in an international film festival (the Grand Prix in the 1975 Cannes Film Festival), creating the generic mould for the crossover success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000. The film has achieved a cult status over the years but little has been written about it. This first book-length study of the classic martial arts film therefore redresses its critical neglect, and explores its multi-leveled dimensions and mysteries. One of the central features of the film is the enigmatic knight-lady whose quest for revenge leads her to cross paths with a poor scholar whose interest in military strategy seals their alliance. The author discusses the psychological manifestations and implications of this relationship and concludes that the film's continuing relevance lies in its portrait of sexuality and the feminist desires of the heroine. He also analyzes the film's form as an action piece and the director's preoccupation with Zen as a creative inspiration and as a subject in its own right. As such, he argues that the film is a highly unconventional and idiosyncratic work which attempts to transcend its own genre and reach the heights of universal transcendence. He grounds his study in both Western and Chinese literary sources, providing a broad and comprehensive treatise based on the film's narrative concepts and symbols.Less
A Touch of Zen is one of the first Chinese-language films to gain recognition in an international film festival (the Grand Prix in the 1975 Cannes Film Festival), creating the generic mould for the crossover success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000. The film has achieved a cult status over the years but little has been written about it. This first book-length study of the classic martial arts film therefore redresses its critical neglect, and explores its multi-leveled dimensions and mysteries. One of the central features of the film is the enigmatic knight-lady whose quest for revenge leads her to cross paths with a poor scholar whose interest in military strategy seals their alliance. The author discusses the psychological manifestations and implications of this relationship and concludes that the film's continuing relevance lies in its portrait of sexuality and the feminist desires of the heroine. He also analyzes the film's form as an action piece and the director's preoccupation with Zen as a creative inspiration and as a subject in its own right. As such, he argues that the film is a highly unconventional and idiosyncratic work which attempts to transcend its own genre and reach the heights of universal transcendence. He grounds his study in both Western and Chinese literary sources, providing a broad and comprehensive treatise based on the film's narrative concepts and symbols.
Yingjin Zhang
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833374
- eISBN:
- 9780824870584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833374.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the scale of the national used to occupy the central attention in film studies and argues that the resulting myth of a unified national cinema in a given nation-state must be ...
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This chapter examines the scale of the national used to occupy the central attention in film studies and argues that the resulting myth of a unified national cinema in a given nation-state must be demystified. It first reconceptualizes Chinese cinema in relation to the shifting problematics of national cinema and transnational film studies in both the theoretical and historical contexts. It then considers interdisciplinarity in Chinese film studies in the West and how it benefits audience study, along with the thorny issues of piracy and cross-mediality. It also discusses film studies from a different perspective than transnationalism and speculates on what might be gained from comparative film studies, arguing that it is a subfield larger than transnational film studies. The chapter urges scholars to move beyond the national cinema paradigm and to explore the transnational and comparative frameworks of film studies.Less
This chapter examines the scale of the national used to occupy the central attention in film studies and argues that the resulting myth of a unified national cinema in a given nation-state must be demystified. It first reconceptualizes Chinese cinema in relation to the shifting problematics of national cinema and transnational film studies in both the theoretical and historical contexts. It then considers interdisciplinarity in Chinese film studies in the West and how it benefits audience study, along with the thorny issues of piracy and cross-mediality. It also discusses film studies from a different perspective than transnationalism and speculates on what might be gained from comparative film studies, arguing that it is a subfield larger than transnational film studies. The chapter urges scholars to move beyond the national cinema paradigm and to explore the transnational and comparative frameworks of film studies.
Jiayan Mi
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622090866
- eISBN:
- 9789882206724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622090866.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the cultural, psychological, and political pathology in certain important mainland Chinese and Taiwanese films, by focusing on water as a site of contested signification. It ...
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This chapter examines the cultural, psychological, and political pathology in certain important mainland Chinese and Taiwanese films, by focusing on water as a site of contested signification. It examines the polysemic figure of water as a poignant articulation of “ambient unheimlich” or the cultural malaise, environmental dysfunctionality, and psychological anxiety emblematical of post-Mao mainland China and post-Miracle Taiwan. Films that engage water as a site of ecological imagination can be clustered into three groups, each addressing a crucial aspect of China's water-borne crisis: (1) shortage/scarcity/drought in Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984), Wu Tianming's Old Well (1986), and Tsai Mingliang's The Wayward Cloud (2005); (2) toxification in Lou Ye's Suzhou River (2000), Tsai Mingliang's The River (1997), and The Hole (1998); and (3) colonization/disruption of water in Zhang Ming's Clouds over Wushan (1996) and Jia Zhangke's Still Life (2006).Less
This chapter examines the cultural, psychological, and political pathology in certain important mainland Chinese and Taiwanese films, by focusing on water as a site of contested signification. It examines the polysemic figure of water as a poignant articulation of “ambient unheimlich” or the cultural malaise, environmental dysfunctionality, and psychological anxiety emblematical of post-Mao mainland China and post-Miracle Taiwan. Films that engage water as a site of ecological imagination can be clustered into three groups, each addressing a crucial aspect of China's water-borne crisis: (1) shortage/scarcity/drought in Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984), Wu Tianming's Old Well (1986), and Tsai Mingliang's The Wayward Cloud (2005); (2) toxification in Lou Ye's Suzhou River (2000), Tsai Mingliang's The River (1997), and The Hole (1998); and (3) colonization/disruption of water in Zhang Ming's Clouds over Wushan (1996) and Jia Zhangke's Still Life (2006).
Stephen Teo
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098152
- eISBN:
- 9789882207110
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098152.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
A Touch of Zen is one of the essential films of the Chinese-language cinema. It achieved a “double first”: it was the first Chinese-language film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1975, ...
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A Touch of Zen is one of the essential films of the Chinese-language cinema. It achieved a “double first”: it was the first Chinese-language film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1975, and the first wuxia (martial chivalry) film to do so at an international film festival. In this detailed and concentrated study, this book shows why it considers A Touch of Zento be an essential film, and why it is Hu's masterpiece and how it is quite unlike other wuxia films that came before or after. It is also historically important in the modern development of the Hong Kong cinema as well as the Taiwan cinema. The book argues that its key significance is its subversive portrait of the female hero, and a concomitant sexual ambiguity infecting both the male and female protagonists.Less
A Touch of Zen is one of the essential films of the Chinese-language cinema. It achieved a “double first”: it was the first Chinese-language film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1975, and the first wuxia (martial chivalry) film to do so at an international film festival. In this detailed and concentrated study, this book shows why it considers A Touch of Zento be an essential film, and why it is Hu's masterpiece and how it is quite unlike other wuxia films that came before or after. It is also historically important in the modern development of the Hong Kong cinema as well as the Taiwan cinema. The book argues that its key significance is its subversive portrait of the female hero, and a concomitant sexual ambiguity infecting both the male and female protagonists.
G. Andrew Stuckey
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9789888390816
- eISBN:
- 9789888455133
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390816.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Depictions within a movie of either filmmaking or film watching are hardly novel, but the dramatic expansion of the reach of the metacinematic into contemporary Chinese cinemas is nothing short of ...
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Depictions within a movie of either filmmaking or film watching are hardly novel, but the dramatic expansion of the reach of the metacinematic into contemporary Chinese cinemas is nothing short of remarkable. The prevalence of metacinematic features forms the basis of a discourse on film arising from the films themselves. Such a discourse, in turn, outlines the boundaries of the possible for film in China as aesthetic or sociopolitical practice. Metacinema also draws our attention to the presence of the audience, people actively responding to a film. In elucidating the affective responses elicited by the metacinematic mode in the viewers, Stuckey argues that metacinema reflects ways of being in the world that audiences may take up for themselves. The films studied in this book are drawn across the full spectrum of Chinese films made in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan during the 1990s and 2000s, from award-winning conceptual art films to popular crowd pleasers, blockbusters to low budget productions, and documentary-style social realist exposé projects to studio assembly line investments. The recurrence of the metacinematic across this broad range of works is indicative of its relevance to Chinese films today, and the analysis of these diverse examples allows us to gauge the cultural, social, and aesthetic implications of Chinese cinemas as a whole.Less
Depictions within a movie of either filmmaking or film watching are hardly novel, but the dramatic expansion of the reach of the metacinematic into contemporary Chinese cinemas is nothing short of remarkable. The prevalence of metacinematic features forms the basis of a discourse on film arising from the films themselves. Such a discourse, in turn, outlines the boundaries of the possible for film in China as aesthetic or sociopolitical practice. Metacinema also draws our attention to the presence of the audience, people actively responding to a film. In elucidating the affective responses elicited by the metacinematic mode in the viewers, Stuckey argues that metacinema reflects ways of being in the world that audiences may take up for themselves. The films studied in this book are drawn across the full spectrum of Chinese films made in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan during the 1990s and 2000s, from award-winning conceptual art films to popular crowd pleasers, blockbusters to low budget productions, and documentary-style social realist exposé projects to studio assembly line investments. The recurrence of the metacinematic across this broad range of works is indicative of its relevance to Chinese films today, and the analysis of these diverse examples allows us to gauge the cultural, social, and aesthetic implications of Chinese cinemas as a whole.
Richard J. Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622095861
- eISBN:
- 9789882207080
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622095861.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Jin and his lover Wang Renmei married at Lianhua's 1934 New Year's party. The battle with the censors continued. Director Sun Yu was determined to make an anti-Japanese film and still get it by the ...
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Jin and his lover Wang Renmei married at Lianhua's 1934 New Year's party. The battle with the censors continued. Director Sun Yu was determined to make an anti-Japanese film and still get it by the KMT censors. The Big Road is considered one of the top hundred Chinese films of all time. Jin's performance and Sun's direction gave both added stature to their reputation. ther pressures added to their already harried life. While the newly married couple was in Nanjing, they learned about the suicide of their acting colleague, Ruan Ling-yu. Political changes would soon make the lives of Jin and his colleagues even more perilous. The United States and European countries were impressed with the new wave of national unity. The Japanese however, read into the move as an obstruction to their “peaceful advance” into China. Militarists in Tokyo began to press for direct action.Less
Jin and his lover Wang Renmei married at Lianhua's 1934 New Year's party. The battle with the censors continued. Director Sun Yu was determined to make an anti-Japanese film and still get it by the KMT censors. The Big Road is considered one of the top hundred Chinese films of all time. Jin's performance and Sun's direction gave both added stature to their reputation. ther pressures added to their already harried life. While the newly married couple was in Nanjing, they learned about the suicide of their acting colleague, Ruan Ling-yu. Political changes would soon make the lives of Jin and his colleagues even more perilous. The United States and European countries were impressed with the new wave of national unity. The Japanese however, read into the move as an obstruction to their “peaceful advance” into China. Militarists in Tokyo began to press for direct action.
Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693559
- eISBN:
- 9781452950792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693559.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The concept “approaching reality” is defined and a connection between it and the Bazinian ontology is established. I also explicate the various terms used in China during this period to frame the ...
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The concept “approaching reality” is defined and a connection between it and the Bazinian ontology is established. I also explicate the various terms used in China during this period to frame the critical debates on the cinema and their conceptual implications in a cross-cultural intellectual dialogue.Less
The concept “approaching reality” is defined and a connection between it and the Bazinian ontology is established. I also explicate the various terms used in China during this period to frame the critical debates on the cinema and their conceptual implications in a cross-cultural intellectual dialogue.
Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693559
- eISBN:
- 9781452950792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693559.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
I examine—in dialogue with Eurpean Marxists and Deleuze—the Marxist film theory in Shanghai in the 1930s and its notion of cinematographic consciousness—an idea that suggests that cinema can sense, ...
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I examine—in dialogue with Eurpean Marxists and Deleuze—the Marxist film theory in Shanghai in the 1930s and its notion of cinematographic consciousness—an idea that suggests that cinema can sense, feel, think and instill its consciousness to the sentient bodies of the viewers.Less
I examine—in dialogue with Eurpean Marxists and Deleuze—the Marxist film theory in Shanghai in the 1930s and its notion of cinematographic consciousness—an idea that suggests that cinema can sense, feel, think and instill its consciousness to the sentient bodies of the viewers.
Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693559
- eISBN:
- 9781452950792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693559.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
I trace the definitions of “approaching reality” back to the critical discussions by two filmmakers in the 1920s, Gu Kenfu and Hou Yao, to open up a comparative space between early Chinese film ...
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I trace the definitions of “approaching reality” back to the critical discussions by two filmmakers in the 1920s, Gu Kenfu and Hou Yao, to open up a comparative space between early Chinese film thinking and Bazanian ontology, and discuss the various problems in comparative studies.Less
I trace the definitions of “approaching reality” back to the critical discussions by two filmmakers in the 1920s, Gu Kenfu and Hou Yao, to open up a comparative space between early Chinese film thinking and Bazanian ontology, and discuss the various problems in comparative studies.
Yingjin Zhang
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833374
- eISBN:
- 9780824870584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833374.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the cinematic representations of Beijing and a persistent engagement with polylocality in hinterland China. More specifically, it considers “cinematic remapping” as a particular ...
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This chapter examines the cinematic representations of Beijing and a persistent engagement with polylocality in hinterland China. More specifically, it considers “cinematic remapping” as a particular mode of urban imaginary that combines motion, emotion, and commotion in an intensified, often visceral representation of temporality, spatiality, locality, inequality, identity, and subjectivity. Focusing on moving images, the chapter explores instances of cinematic remapping that favor street-level views over cartographic surveys, contingent experience over systematic knowledge, and bittersweet local histoires over a grand-scale global history. The chapter first surveys the imaginaries of Beijing in Hollywood history before discussing four Chinese films set in Beijing and released in the new millennium. It also analyzes Jia Zhangke's most recent works as place-based projects grounded in polylocality and critical of the trappings of modernity and globalization.Less
This chapter examines the cinematic representations of Beijing and a persistent engagement with polylocality in hinterland China. More specifically, it considers “cinematic remapping” as a particular mode of urban imaginary that combines motion, emotion, and commotion in an intensified, often visceral representation of temporality, spatiality, locality, inequality, identity, and subjectivity. Focusing on moving images, the chapter explores instances of cinematic remapping that favor street-level views over cartographic surveys, contingent experience over systematic knowledge, and bittersweet local histoires over a grand-scale global history. The chapter first surveys the imaginaries of Beijing in Hollywood history before discussing four Chinese films set in Beijing and released in the new millennium. It also analyzes Jia Zhangke's most recent works as place-based projects grounded in polylocality and critical of the trappings of modernity and globalization.
Judith Pernin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748694136
- eISBN:
- 9781474412193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694136.003.0016
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter focuses on online documentary practices. It attempts to puts in perspective the uses generated by the independent Chinese documentary movement from the dawn of Internet film forums in ...
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This chapter focuses on online documentary practices. It attempts to puts in perspective the uses generated by the independent Chinese documentary movement from the dawn of Internet film forums in the mid-1990s to the microblogs in the late 2000s. Two decades of online practices in this small film milieu reflect the evolution of both web-based platforms and Chinese independent documentary filmmakers. Using detailed examples, it shows that their unofficial cinephilia, emerging from piracy practices, quickly moved towards exchanges reflecting the filmmakers' concerns for recognition of their works and, beyond that, for the sensitive sociopolitical issues dealt with in their films. The popular practice of online document sharing completes and extends their film practices and creates a wider network ranging from film enthusiasts to activists.Less
This chapter focuses on online documentary practices. It attempts to puts in perspective the uses generated by the independent Chinese documentary movement from the dawn of Internet film forums in the mid-1990s to the microblogs in the late 2000s. Two decades of online practices in this small film milieu reflect the evolution of both web-based platforms and Chinese independent documentary filmmakers. Using detailed examples, it shows that their unofficial cinephilia, emerging from piracy practices, quickly moved towards exchanges reflecting the filmmakers' concerns for recognition of their works and, beyond that, for the sensitive sociopolitical issues dealt with in their films. The popular practice of online document sharing completes and extends their film practices and creates a wider network ranging from film enthusiasts to activists.
Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693559
- eISBN:
- 9781452950792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693559.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
I study the soft film theory in the 1930s by contextualizing it within the cross-cultural intellectual debate on life and art, and analyse how this aesthetic debate sees the cinema as a biomimetic ...
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I study the soft film theory in the 1930s by contextualizing it within the cross-cultural intellectual debate on life and art, and analyse how this aesthetic debate sees the cinema as a biomimetic machine that negotiates the relationship between life, biological life and national life.Less
I study the soft film theory in the 1930s by contextualizing it within the cross-cultural intellectual debate on life and art, and analyse how this aesthetic debate sees the cinema as a biomimetic machine that negotiates the relationship between life, biological life and national life.
Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693559
- eISBN:
- 9781452950792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693559.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
I discuss the history and theoretical debates of the Hong Kong Cantoese sound film in the 1930s, an art form that was conflated ontologically with the Cantonese theatre as an art of ideation: a form ...
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I discuss the history and theoretical debates of the Hong Kong Cantoese sound film in the 1930s, an art form that was conflated ontologically with the Cantonese theatre as an art of ideation: a form of “play” that “puts into play” contesting human relationships and political ideas.Less
I discuss the history and theoretical debates of the Hong Kong Cantoese sound film in the 1930s, an art form that was conflated ontologically with the Cantonese theatre as an art of ideation: a form of “play” that “puts into play” contesting human relationships and political ideas.
Hsiu-Chuang Deppman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833732
- eISBN:
- 9780824870782
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833732.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Contemporary Chinese films are popular with audiences worldwide, but a key reason for their success has gone unnoticed: many of the films are adapted from brilliant literary works. This book is the ...
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Contemporary Chinese films are popular with audiences worldwide, but a key reason for their success has gone unnoticed: many of the films are adapted from brilliant literary works. This book is the first to put these landmark films in the context of their literary origins and explore how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives and styles for film. The book argues that the rise of cinema in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in the late 1980s was partly fueled by burgeoning literary movements. Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou’s highly acclaimed films Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, and To Live are built on the experimental works of Mo Yan, Su Tong, and Yu Hua, respectively. Hong Kong new wave’s Ann Hui and Stanley Kwan capitalized on the irresistible visual metaphors of Eileen Chang’s postrealism. Hou Xiaoxian’s new Taiwan cinema turned to fiction by Huang Chunming and Zhu Tianwen for fine-grained perspectives on class and gender relations. The seven in-depth studies include a diverse array of forms (cinematic adaptation of literature, literary adaptation of film, auto-adaptation, and non-narrative adaptation) and a variety of genres (martial arts, melodrama, romance, autobiography, documentary drama). Complementing this formal diversity is a geographical range that far exceeds the cultural, linguistic, and physical boundaries of China. The directors represented here also work in the United States and Europe and reflect the growing international resources of Chinese-language cinema.Less
Contemporary Chinese films are popular with audiences worldwide, but a key reason for their success has gone unnoticed: many of the films are adapted from brilliant literary works. This book is the first to put these landmark films in the context of their literary origins and explore how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives and styles for film. The book argues that the rise of cinema in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in the late 1980s was partly fueled by burgeoning literary movements. Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou’s highly acclaimed films Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, and To Live are built on the experimental works of Mo Yan, Su Tong, and Yu Hua, respectively. Hong Kong new wave’s Ann Hui and Stanley Kwan capitalized on the irresistible visual metaphors of Eileen Chang’s postrealism. Hou Xiaoxian’s new Taiwan cinema turned to fiction by Huang Chunming and Zhu Tianwen for fine-grained perspectives on class and gender relations. The seven in-depth studies include a diverse array of forms (cinematic adaptation of literature, literary adaptation of film, auto-adaptation, and non-narrative adaptation) and a variety of genres (martial arts, melodrama, romance, autobiography, documentary drama). Complementing this formal diversity is a geographical range that far exceeds the cultural, linguistic, and physical boundaries of China. The directors represented here also work in the United States and Europe and reflect the growing international resources of Chinese-language cinema.
Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693559
- eISBN:
- 9781452950792
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693559.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In Cinema Approaching Reality, Victor Fan brings together, for the first time, Chinese and Euro-American film theories and theorists to engage in critical debates about film in Shanghai and Hong Kong ...
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In Cinema Approaching Reality, Victor Fan brings together, for the first time, Chinese and Euro-American film theories and theorists to engage in critical debates about film in Shanghai and Hong Kong from the 1920s through the 1940s. His point of departure is a term popularly employed by Chinese film critics during this period, bizhen, often translated as “lifelike” but best understood as “approaching reality.” What these Chinese theorists mean, in Fan’s reading, is that the cinematographic image is not a form of total reality, but it can allow spectators to apprehend an effect as though they had been there at the time when an event actually happened. Fan suggests that the phrase “approaching reality” can help to renegotiate an aporia (blind spot) that influential French film critic André Bazin wrestled with: the cinematographic image is a trace of reality, yet reality is absent in the cinematographic image, and the cinema makes present this absence as it reactivates the passage of time. Fan enriches Bazinian cinematic ontology with discussions on cinematic reality in Republican China and colonial Hong Kong, putting Western theorists—from Bazin and Kracauer to Baudrillard, Agamben, and Deleuze—into dialogue with their Chinese counterparts. The result is an eye-opening exploration of the potentialities in approaching cinema anew, especially in the photographic materiality following its digital turn.Less
In Cinema Approaching Reality, Victor Fan brings together, for the first time, Chinese and Euro-American film theories and theorists to engage in critical debates about film in Shanghai and Hong Kong from the 1920s through the 1940s. His point of departure is a term popularly employed by Chinese film critics during this period, bizhen, often translated as “lifelike” but best understood as “approaching reality.” What these Chinese theorists mean, in Fan’s reading, is that the cinematographic image is not a form of total reality, but it can allow spectators to apprehend an effect as though they had been there at the time when an event actually happened. Fan suggests that the phrase “approaching reality” can help to renegotiate an aporia (blind spot) that influential French film critic André Bazin wrestled with: the cinematographic image is a trace of reality, yet reality is absent in the cinematographic image, and the cinema makes present this absence as it reactivates the passage of time. Fan enriches Bazinian cinematic ontology with discussions on cinematic reality in Republican China and colonial Hong Kong, putting Western theorists—from Bazin and Kracauer to Baudrillard, Agamben, and Deleuze—into dialogue with their Chinese counterparts. The result is an eye-opening exploration of the potentialities in approaching cinema anew, especially in the photographic materiality following its digital turn.
Xueping Zhong
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834173
- eISBN:
- 9780824870010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834173.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter discusses three films that use television as a motif. These are Ermo (Ermo, dir. Zhou Xiaowen, 1994), Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiaoyao, dir. Jia Zhangke, 2002), and Still Life (Sanxia ...
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This chapter discusses three films that use television as a motif. These are Ermo (Ermo, dir. Zhou Xiaowen, 1994), Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiaoyao, dir. Jia Zhangke, 2002), and Still Life (Sanxia haoren, dir. Jia Zhangke, 2006). After discussing the filmic representations and their implications, it considers the extent to which the filmic-televisual intertextuality invites additional analysis and interpretation of the most dominant form of storytelling in contemporary China. Film–television dynamics (and intertextuality between the two) in these films helps bring television into the foreground as an important sociocultural phenomenon and a cultural text for direct analysis and interpretation. The use of television as a motif in these films also represents the extent to which television exists in a rapidly changing physical and social landscape either as an object of desire (to possess), as background noise that nevertheless reveals part of everyday life, or as a source of complex self-identification. These representational characteristics help situate television in the context of social relations in contemporary China, while making visible the complex cultural and ideological implications within this context.Less
This chapter discusses three films that use television as a motif. These are Ermo (Ermo, dir. Zhou Xiaowen, 1994), Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiaoyao, dir. Jia Zhangke, 2002), and Still Life (Sanxia haoren, dir. Jia Zhangke, 2006). After discussing the filmic representations and their implications, it considers the extent to which the filmic-televisual intertextuality invites additional analysis and interpretation of the most dominant form of storytelling in contemporary China. Film–television dynamics (and intertextuality between the two) in these films helps bring television into the foreground as an important sociocultural phenomenon and a cultural text for direct analysis and interpretation. The use of television as a motif in these films also represents the extent to which television exists in a rapidly changing physical and social landscape either as an object of desire (to possess), as background noise that nevertheless reveals part of everyday life, or as a source of complex self-identification. These representational characteristics help situate television in the context of social relations in contemporary China, while making visible the complex cultural and ideological implications within this context.
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474421614
- eISBN:
- 9781474449588
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474421614.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining ...
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This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and classes that are captured and evoked in art – and charts how this felt experience has changed over the past forty years of China’s economic reforms. The book argues that that Jia’s cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social change, but also as an effort to engage the audience’s emotional responses during this period of China’s massive and fast-paced transformation.Less
This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and classes that are captured and evoked in art – and charts how this felt experience has changed over the past forty years of China’s economic reforms. The book argues that that Jia’s cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social change, but also as an effort to engage the audience’s emotional responses during this period of China’s massive and fast-paced transformation.
Richard J. Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622095861
- eISBN:
- 9789882207080
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622095861.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
After being erased from memory during the Cultural Revolution, the so-called “Emperor of Film”, Jin Yan, reemerged in the main gallery of the National Film Museum to celebrate the 100th anniversary ...
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After being erased from memory during the Cultural Revolution, the so-called “Emperor of Film”, Jin Yan, reemerged in the main gallery of the National Film Museum to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Chinese film in 2005. Jin Yan's life spanned the most turbulent period in modern Chinese history. Born in Korea during the Japanese occupation, he was taken as a child to China for safety. His story through the years enabled him to survive under the corrupt Republican government of the Guomindang (KMT), the Japanese aggression against Shanghai, World War II, the Chinese Civil War, the victory of the Communists (CCP), the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. Back then, the memory of his childhood and the struggles of the Korean people against their Japanese overlords were to influence him and his career for the rest of his life.Less
After being erased from memory during the Cultural Revolution, the so-called “Emperor of Film”, Jin Yan, reemerged in the main gallery of the National Film Museum to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Chinese film in 2005. Jin Yan's life spanned the most turbulent period in modern Chinese history. Born in Korea during the Japanese occupation, he was taken as a child to China for safety. His story through the years enabled him to survive under the corrupt Republican government of the Guomindang (KMT), the Japanese aggression against Shanghai, World War II, the Chinese Civil War, the victory of the Communists (CCP), the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. Back then, the memory of his childhood and the struggles of the Korean people against their Japanese overlords were to influence him and his career for the rest of his life.
Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693559
- eISBN:
- 9781452950792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693559.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
I investigate into the theoretical writings and films of director Fei Mu (Fey Mou) and examine his interests in representing the quotidian in its mundanity. In so doing, time, desire and life are ...
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I investigate into the theoretical writings and films of director Fei Mu (Fey Mou) and examine his interests in representing the quotidian in its mundanity. In so doing, time, desire and life are made palpable in the cinematographic image.Less
I investigate into the theoretical writings and films of director Fei Mu (Fey Mou) and examine his interests in representing the quotidian in its mundanity. In so doing, time, desire and life are made palpable in the cinematographic image.
