Ying Xiao
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812605
- eISBN:
- 9781496812643
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812605.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter observes the conflation of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll music and film at the end of the twentieth century. The chapter begins by probing the genesis of this cinematic-musical alliance on the ...
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This chapter observes the conflation of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll music and film at the end of the twentieth century. The chapter begins by probing the genesis of this cinematic-musical alliance on the cusp of the late 1980s and early 1990s as demonstrated in “Wang Shuo Hooligan Literature” and its film adaptions such as Mi Jiashan’s The Troubleshooters (1988). It, then, turn to a navigation of Cui Jian, the Godfather of Chinese Rock, tracing his voices, images, personas, and iconographies in Chinese films. Close readings of the films such as Beijing Bastards (1992), Good Morning, Beijing (1990), Roots and Branches (2001), and The Sun Also Rises (2007) suggest that the emergence and evolution of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll film shall be seen as a result of widespread and multifaceted transformations in postsocialist China. At the core of this rock imaginary is the aesthetic of cinema vérité and postsocialist realism. The paradigmatic portrayals of rock kids, social outcasts, urban drifters, and postsocialist flâneur therefore herald a new wave of what Naficy has called an “accented” cinema and independent, transnational film practice, whose trajectory parallels the rise of youth culture and popular music in contemporary China.Less
This chapter observes the conflation of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll music and film at the end of the twentieth century. The chapter begins by probing the genesis of this cinematic-musical alliance on the cusp of the late 1980s and early 1990s as demonstrated in “Wang Shuo Hooligan Literature” and its film adaptions such as Mi Jiashan’s The Troubleshooters (1988). It, then, turn to a navigation of Cui Jian, the Godfather of Chinese Rock, tracing his voices, images, personas, and iconographies in Chinese films. Close readings of the films such as Beijing Bastards (1992), Good Morning, Beijing (1990), Roots and Branches (2001), and The Sun Also Rises (2007) suggest that the emergence and evolution of Chinese rock ‘n’ roll film shall be seen as a result of widespread and multifaceted transformations in postsocialist China. At the core of this rock imaginary is the aesthetic of cinema vérité and postsocialist realism. The paradigmatic portrayals of rock kids, social outcasts, urban drifters, and postsocialist flâneur therefore herald a new wave of what Naficy has called an “accented” cinema and independent, transnational film practice, whose trajectory parallels the rise of youth culture and popular music in contemporary China.
Paul Henley
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226327143
- eISBN:
- 9780226327167
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226327167.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
Though relatively unsung in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch (1917–2004) was a towering figure of ethnographic cinema, who, over the course of a fifty-year career, completed over one hundred ...
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Though relatively unsung in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch (1917–2004) was a towering figure of ethnographic cinema, who, over the course of a fifty-year career, completed over one hundred films, both documentary and fiction, and exerted an influence far beyond academia. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Rouch's practical filmmaking methods, which he developed while conducting anthropological research in West Africa in the 1940s–1950s. His innovative use of unscripted improvization by his subjects had a profound impact on the French New Wave, the author reveals, while his documentary work launched the genre of cinema-vérité. In addition to tracking Rouch's pioneering career, the author examines the technical strategies, aesthetic considerations, and ethical positions that contribute to Rouch's cinematographic legacy.Less
Though relatively unsung in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch (1917–2004) was a towering figure of ethnographic cinema, who, over the course of a fifty-year career, completed over one hundred films, both documentary and fiction, and exerted an influence far beyond academia. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Rouch's practical filmmaking methods, which he developed while conducting anthropological research in West Africa in the 1940s–1950s. His innovative use of unscripted improvization by his subjects had a profound impact on the French New Wave, the author reveals, while his documentary work launched the genre of cinema-vérité. In addition to tracking Rouch's pioneering career, the author examines the technical strategies, aesthetic considerations, and ethical positions that contribute to Rouch's cinematographic legacy.
David E. James
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199387595
- eISBN:
- 9780199387632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199387595.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
After the first wave of rock ’n’ roll, for a few years popular music was dominated by folk. Prizing its resistance to corporate capital and US imperialism, the music was broadly cognate with ...
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After the first wave of rock ’n’ roll, for a few years popular music was dominated by folk. Prizing its resistance to corporate capital and US imperialism, the music was broadly cognate with developments in documentary filmmaking, whose technological developments made possible an unprecedented informality in the relation between filmmaker and subject: cinema vérité or Direct Cinema. Around the same time and continuing with the popularity of British music in the United States, independently produced concert documentary films replaced the Hollywood jukebox musicals as the dominant form of rock ’n’ roll cinema: Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1960), The T.A.M.I. Show (1964), and The Big T.N.T. Show (Larry Peerce, 1966). Of these, Steve Binder’s T.A.M.I. Show recorded spellbinding performances by James Brown and the Rolling Stones, creating beautiful images of a black/white, US/UK musical commonality.Less
After the first wave of rock ’n’ roll, for a few years popular music was dominated by folk. Prizing its resistance to corporate capital and US imperialism, the music was broadly cognate with developments in documentary filmmaking, whose technological developments made possible an unprecedented informality in the relation between filmmaker and subject: cinema vérité or Direct Cinema. Around the same time and continuing with the popularity of British music in the United States, independently produced concert documentary films replaced the Hollywood jukebox musicals as the dominant form of rock ’n’ roll cinema: Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1960), The T.A.M.I. Show (1964), and The Big T.N.T. Show (Larry Peerce, 1966). Of these, Steve Binder’s T.A.M.I. Show recorded spellbinding performances by James Brown and the Rolling Stones, creating beautiful images of a black/white, US/UK musical commonality.
