The Cinema of Feng Xiaogang

The Cinema of Feng Xiaogang
Author: Rui Zhang
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2008-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9622098851

Beginning first as a case study of Feng Xiaogang, this book explores Chinese film history since the early 1990s in terms of changes of 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 will emerge in this 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, this 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. The book will be a useful reference tool for students and scholars in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese film history and film studies. It could also be used as textbook for classes about Asian cinema, international cinema and Chinese culture/film studies. The extensive use of data about the Chinese film market, and elaborate analysis of the situation of Chinese film industry make this book a valuable volume for classroom and personal use.

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.

The Chinese Cinema Book

The Chinese Cinema Book
Author: Song Hwee Lim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2020-04-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1911239554

This revised and updated new edition provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of cinema in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as to disaporic and transnational Chinese film-making, from the beginnings of cinema to the present day. Chapters by leading international scholars are grouped in thematic sections addressing key historical periods, film movements, genres, stars and auteurs, and the industrial and technological contexts of cinema in Greater China.

The Sentimental in Chinese Cinema

The Sentimental in Chinese Cinema
Author: Hui Miao
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2022-03-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3030883302

This book explores manifestations and perpetuations of the sentimental in Mainland Chinese cinema from the 1990s to the 2000s. A sentimental Chinese cinema – one that articulates notions of homecoming and belonging – emerged in the 1990s with its distinctive styles. The representations and configurations of this evolving style of Chinese cinematic expression are not only thought provoking in their own right, but also in the way they contrast with past forms of Chinese sentimental cinema and with sentimental aesthetics elsewhere in the world. These new representations have transformed established family centred expressions of the sentimental in Chinese cinema. The new sentimental emphasises togetherness and a yearning for belonging which often appear in the themes of homecoming and home-longing. This also forms a cultural resistance towards the increasingly alienating and isolating forces of globalisation and urbanisation. This book analyses the sociocultural conditions that have allowed for a renewed understanding of the sentimental and the cultural identity markers that are perpetually under contestation.

Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema

Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema
Author: Dan Luo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2024-09-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1538157306

Motion pictures were introduced to China in 1896, and today China is a major player in the global film industry. However, the story of how Chinese cinema became what it is today is exceptionally turbulent, encompassing incursions by foreign powers, warfare among contending rulers, the collapse of the Chinese empire, and the massive setback of the Cultural Revolution. This book coversthe cinematic history of mainland China spanning across over one hundred and twenty years since its inception. Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on the major filmmakers, actors, and historical figures, representative cinematic productions, genre evolution, significant events and institutions, and market changes. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Chinese Cinema.

Visual Culture in Contemporary China

Visual Culture in Contemporary China
Author: Xiaobing Tang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2015-01-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1107084393

Explores China's rich visual culture from the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 to the present day.

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

Middlebrow Cinema

Middlebrow Cinema
Author: Sally Faulkner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2016-03-31
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1317247418

Middlebrow Cinema challenges an often uninterrogated hostility to middlebrow culture that frequently dismisses it as conservative, which it often is not, and feminized or middle-class, which it often is. The volume defines the term relationally against shifting concepts of ‘high’ and ‘low’, and considers its deployment in connection with text, audience and institution. In exploring the concept of the middlebrow, this book recovers films that were widely meaningful to contemporary audiences, yet sometimes overlooked by critics interested in popular and arthouse extremes. It also addresses the question of socially-mobile audiences, who might express their aspirations through film-watching; and traces the cultural consequences of the movement of films across borders and between institutions. The first study of its kind, the volume comprises 11 original essays that test the purchase of the term ‘middlebrow’ across cultures, including those of Europe, Asia and the Americas, from the 1930s to the present day. Middlebrow Cinema brings into view a popular and aspirational - and thus especially relevant and dynamic - area of film and film culture. Ideal for students and researchers in this area, this book: Remaps ‘Popular’ and ‘arthouse’ approaches Explores British, Chinese, French, Indian, Mexican, Spanish ‘national’ cinemas alongside Continental, Hollywood, Queer, Transnational cinemas Analyses Biopic, Heritage, Historical Film, Melodrama, Musical, Sex Comedy genres.

Women in Chinese Martial Arts Films of the New Millennium

Women in Chinese Martial Arts Films of the New Millennium
Author: Ya-chen Chen
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-04-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 073913910X

Women and Gender in Chinese Martial Arts Films of the New Millennium, by Ya-chen Chen, is an excavation of underexposed gender issues focusing mainly on contradictory and troubled feminism in the film narratives. In the cinematic world of martial arts films, one can easily find representations of women of Ancient China released from the constraints of patriarchal social order to revel in a dreamlike space of their own. They can develop themselves, protect themselves, and even defeat or conquer men. This world not only frees women from the convention of foot-binding, but it also "unbinds" them in terms of education, critical thinking, talent, ambition, opportunities to socialize with different men, and the freedom or right to both choose their spouse and decide their own fate. Chen calls this phenomenon "Chinese cinematic martial arts feminism." The liberation is never sustaining or complete, however; Chen reveals the presence of a glass ceiling marking the maximal exercise of feminism and women's rights which the patriarchal order is willing to accept. As such, these films are not to be seen as celebrations of feminist liberation, but as enunciations of the patriarchal authority that suffuses "Chinese cinematic martial arts feminism." The film narratives under examination include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (directed by Ang Lee); Hero (Zhang Yimou); House of the Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou); Seven Swords (Tsui Hark); The Promise (Chen Kaige); The Banquet (Feng Xiaogang); and Curst of the Golden Flower (Zhang Yimou). Chen also touches upon the plots of two of the earliest award-winning Chinese martial arts films, A Touch of Zen and Legend of the Mountain, both directed by King Hu.

Electric Shadows

Electric Shadows
Author: James Bell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2014
Genre: Motion pictures
ISBN: 9781844578498