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.
Valentina Vitali
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099656
- eISBN:
- 9781526109774
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099656.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, ...
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While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, popular films. Why, many years after their release, do we now deem these films worthy of study? The book situates ‘low’ film genres in their economic and culturally specific contexts (a period of unstable ‘economic miracles’ in different countries and regions) and explores the interconnections between those contexts, the immediate industrial-financial interests sustaining the films, and the films’ aesthetics. It argues that the visibility (or not) of popular genres in a nation’s account of its cinema is an indirect but demonstrable effect of the centrality (or not) of a particular kind of capital in that country’s economy. Through in-depth examination of what may at first appear as different cycles in film production and history – the Italian giallo, the Mexican horror film and Hindi horror cinema – Capital and popular cinema lays the foundations of a comparative approach to film; one capable of accounting for the whole of a national film industry’s production (‘popular’ and ‘canonic’) and applicable to the study of film genres globally.Less
While post-war popular cinema has traditionally been excluded from accounts of national cinemas, the last fifteen years have seen the academy’s gradual rediscovery of cult and, more, generally, popular films. Why, many years after their release, do we now deem these films worthy of study? The book situates ‘low’ film genres in their economic and culturally specific contexts (a period of unstable ‘economic miracles’ in different countries and regions) and explores the interconnections between those contexts, the immediate industrial-financial interests sustaining the films, and the films’ aesthetics. It argues that the visibility (or not) of popular genres in a nation’s account of its cinema is an indirect but demonstrable effect of the centrality (or not) of a particular kind of capital in that country’s economy. Through in-depth examination of what may at first appear as different cycles in film production and history – the Italian giallo, the Mexican horror film and Hindi horror cinema – Capital and popular cinema lays the foundations of a comparative approach to film; one capable of accounting for the whole of a national film industry’s production (‘popular’ and ‘canonic’) and applicable to the study of film genres globally.
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/9780816693559.003.0002
- 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.
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.
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.
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:
- 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.
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/9780816693559.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
I use the idea “approaching reality” to extend my discussion to the ontological, sociological and ethical consequences of the digital image, and eventually rethink what it means by cinema ontology in ...
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I use the idea “approaching reality” to extend my discussion to the ontological, sociological and ethical consequences of the digital image, and eventually rethink what it means by cinema ontology in Buddhist terms.Less
I use the idea “approaching reality” to extend my discussion to the ontological, sociological and ethical consequences of the digital image, and eventually rethink what it means by cinema ontology in Buddhist terms.
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.
