China Into Film

China Into Film PDF Author: Jerome Silbergeld
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 9781861890504
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Since 1984, Chinese cinema has been the most dramatic entry onto the international film scene. China into Film is the first book to look at contemporary Chinese cinema as a visual art and to illustrate the ways in which it has been shaped by centuries of Chinese tradition. Jerome Silbergeld looks at the significance of gender roles, the strategies of film-makers in coping with state censorship, the translation of novels into films, the continuing attachment of film-makers to melodrama, and cinematic critiques of Maoism and post-Maoist culture. Abundantly illustrated with Chinese paintings as well as scenes from such internationally acclaimed films as Yellow Earth, Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell My Concubine, China into Film reveals a cinematic form at once excitingly new and deeply imbedded in traditional Chinese visual culture.

China Into Film

China Into Film PDF Author: Jerome Silbergeld
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 9781861890504
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
Since 1984, Chinese cinema has been the most dramatic entry onto the international film scene. China into Film is the first book to look at contemporary Chinese cinema as a visual art and to illustrate the ways in which it has been shaped by centuries of Chinese tradition. Jerome Silbergeld looks at the significance of gender roles, the strategies of film-makers in coping with state censorship, the translation of novels into films, the continuing attachment of film-makers to melodrama, and cinematic critiques of Maoism and post-Maoist culture. Abundantly illustrated with Chinese paintings as well as scenes from such internationally acclaimed films as Yellow Earth, Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell My Concubine, China into Film reveals a cinematic form at once excitingly new and deeply imbedded in traditional Chinese visual culture.

Adapted for the Screen

Adapted for the Screen PDF Author: Hsiu-Chuang Deppman
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824833732
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Hsiu-Chang Deppman puts landmark contemporary Chinese films in the context of their literary origins & explores how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives & styles for film.

China on Film

China on Film PDF Author: Paul G. Pickowicz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442211792
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Leading scholar Paul G. Pickowicz traces the dynamic history of Chinese filmmaking and discusses its course of development from the early days to the present. Moving decade by decade, he explores such key themes as the ever-shifting definitions of modern marriage in 1920s silent features, East-West cultural conflict in the movies of the 1930s, the strong appeal of the powerful melodramatic mode of the 1930s and 1940s, the polarizing political controversies surrounding Chinese filmmaking under the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the 1940s, and the critical role of cinema during the bloody civil war of the late 1940s. Pickowicz then considers the challenging Mao years, including chapters on legendary screen personalities who tried but failed to adjust to the new socialist order in the 1950s, celebrities who made the sort of artistic and political accommodations that would keep them in the spotlight in the post-revolutionary era, and insider film professionals of the early 1960s who actively resisted the most extreme forms of Maoist cultural production. The book concludes with explorations of the highly cathartic films of the early post-Mao era, edgy postsocialist movies that appeared on the eve of the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989, the relevance of the Eastern European "velvet prison" cultural production model, and the rise of underground and independent filmmaking beginning in the 1990s. Throughout its long history of film production, China has been embroiled in a seemingly unending series of wars, revolutions, and jarring social transformations. Despite daunting censorship obstacles, Chinese filmmakers have found ingenious ways of taking political stands and weighing in--for better or worse--on the most explosive social, cultural, and economic issues of the day. Exploring the often gut-wrenching controversies generated by their work, Pickowicz offers a unique and perceptive window on Chinese culture and society.

DV-Made China

DV-Made China PDF Author: Zhen Zhang
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824846818
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
In 1990s post-Reform China, a growing number of people armed with video cameras poured out upon the Chinese landscape to both observe and contribute to the social changes then underway. Happening upon the crucial platform of an older independent film movement, this digital turn has given us a "DV China" that includes film and media communities across different social strata and disenfranchised groups, including ethnic and religious minorities and LGBTQ communities. DV-Made China takes stock of these phenomena by surveying the social and cultural landscape of grassroots and alternative cinema practices after the digital turn around the beginning of the new century. The volume shows how Chinese independent, amateur, and activist filmmakers energize the tension between old and new media, performance and representation, fiction and non-fiction, art and politics, China and the world. Essays by scholars in cinema and media studies, anthropology, history, Asian and Tibetan studies bring innovative interdisciplinary methodologies to critically expand upon existing scholarship on contemporary Chinese independent documentary. Their inquiries then extend to narrative feature, activist video, animation, and other digital hybrids. At every turn, the book confronts digital ironies: On the one hand, its portability facilitates forms of radically private film production and audience habits of small-screen consumption. Yet it also simultaneously links up makers and consumers, curators and censors allowing for speedier circulation, more discussion, and quicker formations of public political and aesthetic discourses. DV-Made China introduces new frameworks in a Chinese setting that range from aesthetics to ethical activism, from digital shooting and editing techniques to the politics of film circulation in festivals and online. Politics, the authors urge, travels along paths of aesthetic excitement, and aesthetic choices, conversely, always bear ethical consequences. The films, their makers, their audiences and their distributional pathways all harbor implications for social change that are closely intertwined with the fate of media culture in the new century of a world that both contains and is influenced by China.

Metacinema in Contemporary Chinese Film

Metacinema in Contemporary Chinese Film PDF Author: G. Andrew Stuckey
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888390813
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
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. To G. Andrew Stuckey, 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. “Stuckey surveys a broad swath of contemporary Chinese cinema, from popular blockbusters to elite art films, around the theme of metacinema, yielding new insights into both previously neglected films and those already acknowledged as contemporary classics. The result is a fascinating dive into the growing and diversifying cinema culture of China today.” —Jason McGrath, University of Minnesota “Stuckey’s brilliant work, Metacinema in Contemporary Chinese Film, offers insightful close analyses of films by key directors from the PRC (Jiang Wen, Lou Ye, Jia Zhangke, and Li Yu), Hong Kong (Peter Chan), and Taiwan (Tsai Ming-liang). This clearly written book is essential reading for scholars and students of Chinese cinemas. Stuckey’s study of genre and metacinema makes it a must-read for anyone interested in cinema.” —Michelle Bloom, University of California, Riverside

Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949

Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949 PDF Author: Christopher G. Rea
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547676
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
Winner, 2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949 is an essential guide to the first golden age of Chinese cinema. Offering detailed introductions to fourteen films, this study highlights the creative achievements of Chinese filmmakers in the decades leading up to 1949, when the Communists won the civil war and began nationalizing cultural industries. Christopher Rea reveals the uniqueness and complexity of Republican China’s cinematic masterworks, from the comedies and melodramas of the silent era to the talkies and musicals of the 1930s and 1940s. Each chapter appraises the artistry of a single film, highlighting its outstanding formal elements, from cinematography to editing to sound design. Examples include the slapstick gags of Laborer’s Love (1922), Ruan Lingyu’s star turn in Goddess (1934), Zhou Xuan’s mesmerizing performance in Street Angels (1937), Eileen Chang’s urbane comedy of manners Long Live the Missus! (1947), the wartime epic Spring River Flows East (1947), and Fei Mu’s acclaimed work of cinematic lyricism, Spring in a Small Town (1948). Rea shares new insights and archival discoveries about famous films, while explaining their significance in relation to politics, society, and global cinema. Lavishly illustrated and featuring extensive guides to further viewings and readings, Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949 offers an accessible tour of China’s early contributions to the cinematic arts.

From Underground to Independent

From Underground to Independent PDF Author: Paul Pickowicz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742554382
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This groundbreaking book presents a critical introduction to the cultural and political dimensions of contemporary Chinese cinema. Leading Western and Chinese scholars trace the changing dynamics of Chinese film culture since the early 1990s as it moves away from underground and toward independence in the new century. Yet as the rich case studies illustrate, the sheer variety of alternative film culture itself provides sufficient opportunities for different--at times contradictory--configurations of cinematic products. Drawing on vigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, the book investigates the objects of its study from various methodological perspectives, ranging from historical and literary to sociological and ethnographic. In addition to offering critical readings of specific texts, this book explores alternative film culture through personal interviews, on-site observations, and media interrogations, from traditional print media to the visual media of film, television, and video, including the new digital media of the Internet. The contributors also consider the flourishing independent documentary filmmaking scene, highlighting a crucial part of alternative film that has been previously obscured by an almost exclusive attention on the fifth- and sixth-generation directors of fictional movies. With its fresh and knowledgeable analysis of Chinese underground and independent filmmaking, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in a society caught between socialism and global currents. Contributions by: Chris Berry, Jim Cheng, Valerie Jaffee, Matthew David Johnson, Tonglin Lu, Chen Mo, Seio Nakajima, Paul G. Pickowicz, Zhiwei Xiao, and Yingjin Zhang.

Chinese Women’s Cinema

Chinese Women’s Cinema PDF Author: Lingzhen Wang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527446
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
The first of its kind in English, this collection explores twenty one well established and lesser known female filmmakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora. Sixteen scholars illuminate these filmmakers' negotiations of local and global politics, cinematic representation, and issues of gender and sexuality, covering works from the 1920s to the present. Writing from the disciplines of Asian, women's, film, and auteur studies, contributors reclaim the work of Esther Eng, Tang Shu Shuen, Dong Kena, and Sylvia Chang, among others, who have transformed Chinese cinematic modernity. Chinese Women's Cinema is a unique, transcultural, interdisciplinary conversation on authorship, feminist cinema, transnational gender, and cinematic agency and representation. Lingzhen Wang's comprehensive introduction recounts the history and limitations of established feminist film theory, particularly its relationship with female cinematic authorship and agency. She also reviews critiques of classical feminist film theory, along with recent developments in feminist practice, altogether remapping feminist film discourse within transnational and interdisciplinary contexts. Wang's subsequent redefinition of women's cinema, and brief history of women's cinematic practices in modern China, encourage the reader to reposition gender and cinema within a transnational feminist configuration, such that power and knowledge are reexamined among and across cultures and nation-states.

The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement

The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement PDF Author: Chris Berry
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888028510
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement is a groundbreaking project unveiling recent documentary film work that has transformed visual culture in China, and brought new immediacy along with a broader base of participation to Chinese media. As a foundational text, this volume provides a much-needed introduction to the topic of Chinese documentary film, the signature mode of contemporary Chinese visual culture. These essays examine how documentary filmmakers have opened up a unique new space of social commentary and critique in an era of rapid social changes amid globalization and marketization. The essays cover topics ranging from cruelty in documentary to the representation of Beijing; gay, lesbian and queer documentary; sound in documentary; the exhibition context in China; authorial intervention and subjectivity; and the distinctive "on the spot" aesthetics of contemporary Chinese documentary. This volume will be critical reading for scholars in disciplines ranging from film and media studies to Chinese studies and Asian studies.

Hollywood Made in China

Hollywood Made in China PDF Author: Aynne Kokas
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520294017
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
"In a race to capture new audiences, Hollywood moguls began courting Chinese investors to create branded entertainment on an international scale--from behemoth theme parks to blockbuster films--after China's 2001 World Trade Organization entry. Hollywood Made in China examines this compelling dynamic, where the distinctions between Hollywood's "Dream Factory" and the "Chinese Dream" of global influence become increasingly blurred. What is revealed illuminates how China's influence is transforming the global media industries from the inside out"--Provided by publisher.