The Chinese Film Industry in the Reform Era

The Chinese Film Industry in the Reform Era
Author: Seio Nakajima
Publisher:
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2007
Genre:
ISBN: 9780549171065

In sociology of culture, this dissertation tackles the question of how to analyze the relationship between the meanings and characteristics of cultural products and the industrial system and organization of production, distribution, and exhibition. I argue that the relation between the nature of cultural products and the industrial system is mediated by the changing, but continuing existence of censorship and restrictions on certain types of films as well as positive sanctions on the production of politically-legitimate films (what is called "main-melody films" or political "propaganda" films). I analyze how the interaction between different types of film text and the industrial context results in such distinctive organizational strategies as product diversification (i.e., produce political films to secure political legitimacy, commercial films to ensure economic viability, and art-house films to claim artistic autonomy) and product specialization (i.e., rely on the subsidies provided by the state for the production of political films in order to survive the increasingly competitive market environment in the Reform era).

Chinese Cinema During the Era of Reform

Chinese Cinema During the Era of Reform
Author: Ying Zhu
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2003-08-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Ying Zhu's study examines the institutional as well as the stylistic transitions of Chinese cinema, from pedagogy to art to commerce, focusing on the key film reform measures as well as the metamorphosis of Chinese 5th generation films from art film narration.

Mainstream Culture Refocused

Mainstream Culture Refocused
Author: Xueping Zhong
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2010-07-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0824860667

Serialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s timely new work draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect "refocusing" mainstream Chinese culture. Mainstream Culture Refocused opens with an examination of television as a narrative motif in three contemporary Chinese art-house films. Zhong then turns her attention to dianshiju’s most important subgenres. "Emperor dramas" highlight the link between popular culture’s obsession with emperors and modern Chinese intellectuals’ preoccupation with issues of history and tradition and how they relate to modernity. In her exploration of the "anti-corruption" subgenre, Zhong considers three representative dramas, exploring their diverse plots and emphases. "Youth dramas’" rich array of representations reveal the numerous social, economic, cultural, and ideological issues surrounding the notion of youth and its changing meanings. The chapter on the "family-marriage" subgenre analyzes the ways in which women’s emotions are represented in relation to their desire for "happiness." Song lyrics from music composed for television dramas are considered as "popular poetics." Their sentiments range between nostalgia and uncertainty, mirroring the social contradictions of the reform era. The Epilogue returns to the relationship between intellectuals and the production of mainstream cultural meaning in the context of China’s post-revolutionary social, economic, and cultural transformation. Provocative and insightful, Mainstream Culture Refocused will appeal to scholars and students in studies of modern China generally and of contemporary Chinese media and popular culture specifically.

Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform

Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform
Author: Xiaomei Chen
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-03-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 047207475X

The profound political, economic, and social changes in China in the second half of the twentieth century have produced a wealth of scholarship; less studied however is how cultural events, and theater reforms in particular, contributed to the dynamic landscape of contemporary Chinese society. Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform fills this gap by investigating the theories and practice of socialist theater and their effects on a diverse range of genres, including Western-style spoken drama, Chinese folk opera, dance drama, Shanghai opera, Beijing opera, and rural theater. Focusing on the 1950s and ’60s, when theater art occupied a prominent political and cultural role in Maoist China, this book examines the efforts to remake theater in a socialist image. It explores the unique dynamics between official discourse, local politics, performance practice, and audience reception that emerged under the pressures of highly politicized cultural reform as well as the off-stage, lived impact of rapid policy change on individuals and troupes obscured by the public record. This multidisciplinary collection by leading scholars covers a wide range of perspectives, geographical locations, specific research methods, genres of performance, and individual knowledge and experience. The richly diverse approach leads readers through a nuanced and complex cultural landscape as it contributes significantly to our understanding of a crucial period in the development of modern Chinese theater and performance.

Chinese Cinema

Chinese Cinema
Author: Paul Clark
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1987
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521326384

Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema

Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema
Author: Ying Zhu
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2010-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9622091768

"Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen have brought together some of the leading scholars and critics of Chinese cinema to rethink the political mutations, market manifestations, and artistic innovations that have punctuated a century of Chinese screen memories. From animation to documentary, history of the industry to cinematic attempts to recreate history, propaganda to piracy, the influx of Hollywood imports to Chinese-style blockbusters, Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema presents a fresh set of critical approaches to the field that should be required reading for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the past, present, and future of one of the most vibrant and dynamic film industries in the world."-Michael Berry, author, Jia Zhangke's "Hometown Trilogy" and A History of Pain "An excellent collection of articles that together offer a superb introduction to contemporary Chinese film studies."-Richard Pena, Program Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center "This is one of the most important, comprehensive, and profoundly important books about Chinese cinema. As correctly pointed out by the editors of the volume, understanding of the emerging film industry in China requires a systematic examination of arts, politics, and commerce of Chinese cinema. By organizing the inquiry of the Chinese film industry around its local and global market, politics, and film art, the authors place the current transformation of Chinese cinema within a large framework. The book has set a new standard for research on Chinese cinema. It is a must-read for students of arts, culture, and politics in China."-Tianjian Shi, Duke University Art politics, and commerce are intertwined everywhere, but in China the interplay is explicit, intimate, and elemental, and nowhere more so than in the film industry. Understanding this interplay in the era of market reform and globalization is essential to understanding mainland Chinese cinema. This interdisciplinary book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of Chinese cinema, surveying the evolution of film production and consumption in mainland China as a product of shifting relations between art, politics, and commerce. Within these arenas, each of the twelve chapters treats a particular history, development, genre, filmmaker or generation of filmmakers, adding up to a distinctively comprehensive rendering of Chinese cinema. The book illuminates China's changing stat-society relations, the trajectory of marketization and globalization, the effects of China's start historical shifts, Hollywood's role, the role of nationalism, and related themes of interest to scholars of Asian studies, cinema and media studies, political science, sociology comparative literature and Chinese language. Ying Zhu is professor of cinema studies in the Department of Media Culture and co-coordinator of the Modern China Studies Program at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Stanley Rosen is director of the East Asian Studies Center and a professor of political science at the University of Southern California.

Building a New China in Cinema

Building a New China in Cinema
Author: Laikwan Pang
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2002
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780742509467

Building a New China in Cinema introduces English readers for the first time to one of the most exciting left-wing cinema traditions in the world. This unique book explores the history, ideology, and aesthetics of China's left-wing cinema movement, a quixotic film culture that was as political as commercial, as militant as sensationalist. Originating in the 1930s, it marked the first systematic intellectual involvement in Chinese cinema. In this era of turmoil and idealism, the movement's films were characterized by fantasies of heroism intertwined with the inescapable spell of impotency, thus exposing the contradictions of the filmmakers' underlying ideology as their political and artistic agendas alternately fought against or catered to the taste and viewing habits of a popular audience. Political cinema became a commercially successful industry, resulting in a film culture that has never been replicated. Drawing on detailed archival research, Pang demonstrates that this cinema movement was a product of the era's social, economic, and political discourses. The author offers a close analysis of many rarely seen films, richly illustrated with over eighty stills collected from the Beijing Film Archive. With its original conceptual approach and rich use of primary sources, this book will be of interest not only to scholars and fans of Chinese cinema but to those who study the relationship between cinema and modernity.

Chinese Cinema

Chinese Cinema
Author: Jeff Kyong-McClain
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2022-07-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 988852853X

In Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization, a variety of scholars explore the history, aesthetics, and politics of Chinese cinema as the Chinese film industry grapples with its place as the second largest film industry in the world. Exploring the various ways that Chinese cinema engages with global politics, market forces, and film cultures, this edited volume places Chinese cinema against an array of contexts informing the contours of Chinese cinema today. The book also demonstrates that Chinese cinema in the global context is informed by the intersections and tensions found in Chinese and world politics, national and international co-productions, the local and global in representing Chineseness, and the lived experiences of social and political movements versus screened politics in Chinese film culture. This work is a pioneer investigation of the topic and will inspire future research by other scholars of film studies. “This edited volume offers a much-needed account of alternative ways of envisioning Chinese cinema in the special context of China and the world. Its vigorous theoretical framework, which puts emphasis on interactions in the context of China and the world, will complement and update publications in related areas.” —Yiu-Wai Chu, The University of Hong Kong; author of Main Melody Films: Hong Kong Directors in Mainland China “Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization offers a collection of studies of modern Chinese films and their global connections, with a contemporary emphasis. Its authors’ insightful analyses of films—famous, obscure, and new to the twenty-first-century screen—elucidate numerous contextual factors relevant for understanding the history and aesthetics of Chinese cinemas.” —Christopher Rea, The University of British Columbia; author of Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949

Commercial Renaissance of Chinese Cinema

Commercial Renaissance of Chinese Cinema
Author: Yi Lu (doctor of radio-television-film)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

In the 2000s, Chinese film industry, the most important propaganda apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party, was transformed into a commercial culture industry and became the second largest film market in the world. This project is a formal, cultural and industrial analysis of the transformation of the Chinese film industry and the corresponding changes in production culture due to a new wave of movie industry reforms starting in the late 1990s. By placing Chinese cinema in the world scene within globalization, this dissertation addresses the following research questions: How did the Chinese state undertake movie industry reforms and accelerate them in the 2000s? How did industrial transformation and commercialization influence filmmaking practices in terms of mode of production, genre, and narrative? To what extent were Chinese practitioners impacted by these state-directed reforms and shaped by market forces? To what extent did Hollywood’s commercial films influence Chinese cinema? With an integrated framework combining political economy, cultural studies, media industry studies, and film studies, Commercial Revitalization of Chinese Cinema considers China’s movie industry reform and industry transformation as culture phenomena. Three case studies of the industrial transformations in this project reveal China’s unique approaches to reviving its national film industry and building film as a type of soft power. It also illustrates an interesting media reform model substantially different from that of Hollywood and other national cinemas. I argue that China’s political economy and its special political, social and cultural histories are determinant in enabling the movie industry reform to develop a hybrid culture industry model that combines China’s experience in SOEs (State-Owned Enterprises) reform and Hollywood’s commercial film business model. As a result of industry transformation and structural changes, the emerging Chinese blockbuster production became a dominant mode of production, which localized and transformed generic and aesthetic conventions found in other film cultures as a dynamic interaction between global and local cultural exchanges.