Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy'

Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' PDF Author: Michael Berry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838716556
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
The three films comprising director Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' - Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures(2002) - represent key contributions to the cinema of contemporary China. The films, which are set in Jia's home province of Shanxi, highlight the plight of marginalised individuals – singers, dancers, pickpockets, prostitutes and drifters – as they struggle to navigate through the radically transforming terrain of contemporary China. Xiao Wu tells the story of a small-time pickpocket who faces the breakdown of his relationships with his friends, family and girlfriend. Platform, often considered Jia's most ambitious film, is an epic narrative that bears witness to China's roaring eighties and the radical transformation from socialism to capitalism. Jia's third feature, Unknown Pleasures continues his meditation on China in transition, tracing the story of two delinquent teenagers who live on a diet of saccharine Chinese pop music, karaoke, Pulp Fiction, and Coca-Cola while entertaining pipe dreams of joining the army and becoming small-time gangsters. Michael Berry's in-depth study of the three films considers them as an ambitious attempt to re-examine the transformation and fate of provincial China – its places and people – as it is caught up in a whirlwind of sweeping social, cultural and economic change. At the heart of the book lies a series of close readings of each of the three films; through which Berry teases out their central narrative themes, highlighting Jia's use of editing, cinematic language, and mise en scene. He pays special attention to the place of intertextuality in Jia's oeuvre, as well as the central themes of destruction and change, stagnation and movement, political verses popular culture, and, of course, the ceaseless search for home. Michael Berry is Associate Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005), and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008). He is also the translator of several novels, including The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008), To Live (2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), and Wild Kids (2000).

Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy'

Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' PDF Author: Michael Berry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838716556
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
The three films comprising director Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' - Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures(2002) - represent key contributions to the cinema of contemporary China. The films, which are set in Jia's home province of Shanxi, highlight the plight of marginalised individuals – singers, dancers, pickpockets, prostitutes and drifters – as they struggle to navigate through the radically transforming terrain of contemporary China. Xiao Wu tells the story of a small-time pickpocket who faces the breakdown of his relationships with his friends, family and girlfriend. Platform, often considered Jia's most ambitious film, is an epic narrative that bears witness to China's roaring eighties and the radical transformation from socialism to capitalism. Jia's third feature, Unknown Pleasures continues his meditation on China in transition, tracing the story of two delinquent teenagers who live on a diet of saccharine Chinese pop music, karaoke, Pulp Fiction, and Coca-Cola while entertaining pipe dreams of joining the army and becoming small-time gangsters. Michael Berry's in-depth study of the three films considers them as an ambitious attempt to re-examine the transformation and fate of provincial China – its places and people – as it is caught up in a whirlwind of sweeping social, cultural and economic change. At the heart of the book lies a series of close readings of each of the three films; through which Berry teases out their central narrative themes, highlighting Jia's use of editing, cinematic language, and mise en scene. He pays special attention to the place of intertextuality in Jia's oeuvre, as well as the central themes of destruction and change, stagnation and movement, political verses popular culture, and, of course, the ceaseless search for home. Michael Berry is Associate Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005), and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008). He is also the translator of several novels, including The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008), To Live (2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), and Wild Kids (2000).

Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy'

Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' PDF Author: Michael Berry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
The three films comprising director Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' - Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures(2002) - represent key contributions to the cinema of contemporary China. The films, which are set in Jia's home province of Shanxi, highlight the plight of marginalised individuals – singers, dancers, pickpockets, prostitutes and drifters – as they struggle to navigate through the radically transforming terrain of contemporary China. Xiao Wu tells the story of a small-time pickpocket who faces the breakdown of his relationships with his friends, family and girlfriend. Platform, often considered Jia's most ambitious film, is an epic narrative that bears witness to China's roaring eighties and the radical transformation from socialism to capitalism. Jia's third feature, Unknown Pleasures continues his meditation on China in transition, tracing the story of two delinquent teenagers who live on a diet of saccharine Chinese pop music, karaoke, Pulp Fiction, and Coca-Cola while entertaining pipe dreams of joining the army and becoming small-time gangsters. Michael Berry's in-depth study of the three films considers them as an ambitious attempt to re-examine the transformation and fate of provincial China – its places and people – as it is caught up in a whirlwind of sweeping social, cultural and economic change. At the heart of the book lies a series of close readings of each of the three films; through which Berry teases out their central narrative themes, highlighting Jia's use of editing, cinematic language, and mise en scene. He pays special attention to the place of intertextuality in Jia's oeuvre, as well as the central themes of destruction and change, stagnation and movement, political verses popular culture, and, of course, the ceaseless search for home. Michael Berry is Associate Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005), and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008). He is also the translator of several novels, including The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008), To Live (2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), and Wild Kids (2000).

Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures

Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures PDF Author: Michael Berry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781838713287
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The three films comprising director Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' - Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures (2002) - represent key contributions to the cinema of contemporary China. The films, which are set in Jia's home province of Shanxi, highlight the plight of marginalised individuals - singers, dancers, pickpockets, prostitutes and drifters - as they struggle to navigate through the radically transforming terrain of contemporary China. Xiao Wu tells the story of a small-time pickpocket who faces the breakdown of his relationships with his friends, family and girlfriend. Platform, often considered Jia's most ambitious film, is an epic narrative that bears witness to China's roaring eighties and the radical transformation from socialism to capitalism. Jia's third feature, Unknown Pleasures continues his meditation on China in transition, tracing the story of two delinquent teenagers who live on a diet of saccharine Chinese pop music, karaoke, Pulp Fiction, and Coca-Cola while entertaining pipe dreams of joining the army and becoming small-time gangsters. Michael Berry's in-depth study of the three films considers them as an ambitious attempt to re-examine the transformation and fate of provincial China - its places and people - as it is caught up in a whirlwind of sweeping social, cultural and economic change. At the heart of the book lies a series of close readings of each of the three films; through which Berry teases out their central narrative themes, highlighting Jia's use of editing, cinematic language, and mise en scene. He pays special attention to the place of intertextuality in Jia's oeuvre, as well as the central themes of destruction and change, stagnation and movement, political verses popular culture, and, of course, the ceaseless search for home. Michael Berry is Associate Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005), and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008). He is also the translator of several novels, including The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008), To Live (2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), and Wild Kids (2000).

Postsocialist Conditions

Postsocialist Conditions PDF Author: Xiaoping Wang
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004385584
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
In Postsocialist Conditions: Idea and History in China’s “Independent Cinema,” 1988-2008, WANG Xiaoping offers a comprehensive survey and trenchant critique of China’s “Independent Cinema” by the sixth-generation auteurs. By showing the multi-valence of the postsocialist conditions in contemporary Chinese society, their films articulate a new cultural-political logic in postsocialist China, which is also the logic of the market in this era of neoliberal transformation, brought about by the forces of marketization since the late 1980s. The directors laudably show the spirits of humanism and the humanitarian concerns of the underclass, yet the shortage and repudiation of class analysis prohibits the artists from exploring the social contradictions and the cause of class restructuration.

The Cinema of Jia Zhangke

The Cinema of Jia Zhangke PDF Author: Cecília Mello
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350121703
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Shorlisted for the BAFTSS 2020 Award for Best Monograph Despite his films being subjected to censorship and denigration in his native China, Jia Zhangke has become the country's leading independent film director internationally. Seen as one of world cinema's foremost auteurs, he has played a crucial role in documenting and reflecting upon China's era of intense transformations since the 1990s. Cecília Mello provides in-depth analysis of Jia's unique body of work, from his early films Xiao Wu and Platform, to experimental quasi-documentary 24 City and the audacious Mountains May Depart. Mello suggests that Jia's particular expression of the realist mode is shaped by the aesthetics of other Chinese artistic traditions, allowing Jia to unearth memories both personal and collective, still lingering within the ever-changing landscapes of contemporary China. Mello's groundbreaking study opens a door into Chinese cinema and culture, addressing the nature of the so-called 'impure' cinematographic art and the complex representation of China through the ages. Foreword by Walter Salles

A History of Pain

A History of Pain PDF Author: Michael Berry
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231141637
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
This work probes the restaging, representation, and reimagining of historical violence and atrocity in contemporary Chinese fiction, film, and popular culture. It examines five historical moments including the Musha Incident (1930) and the February 28 Incident (1947).

Wild Kids

Wild Kids PDF Author: Ta-chun Chang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023150005X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
These two searingly funny and unsettling portraits of teenagers beyond the control and largely beneath the notice of adults in 1980s Taiwan are the first English translations of works by Taiwan's most famous and best-selling literary cult figure. Chang Ta-chun's intricate narrative and keen, ironic sense of humor poignantly and piercingly convey the disillusionment and cynicism of modern Taiwanese youth. Interweaving the events between the birth of the narrator's younger sister and her abortion at the age of nineteen, the first novel, My Kid Sister, evokes the complex emotional impressions of youth and the often bizarre social dilemmas of adolescence. Combining discussions of fate, existentialism, sexual awakening, and everyday "absurdities" in a typically dysfunctional household, it documents the loss of innocence and the deconstruction of a family. In Wild Child, fourteen-year-old Hou Shichun drops out of school, runs away from home, and descends into the Taiwanese underworld, where he encounters an oddball assortment of similarly lost adolescents in desperate circumstances. This novel will inevitably invite comparisons with the classic The Catcher in the Rye, but unlike Holden Caulfield, Hou isn't given any second chances. With characteristic frankness and irony, Chang's teenagers bear witness to a new form of cultural and spiritual bankruptcy.

World on Film

World on Film PDF Author: Martha P. Nochimson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405139781
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
This uniquely engaging and lively textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to international film, from the golden age of European cinema to the contemporary blockbusters of India and Asia, and the post World War II emergence of global film culture. Offers an overview of film culture in European countries such as France, Sweden and Spain, as well as Africa, Hong Kong, China, and India, in a clear and conversational style to engage the student reader Provides a detailed exploration of the impact of globalization on international cinema Includes a comprehensive companion website (www.wiley.com/go/worldonfilm) with an expansive gallery of film stills also found in the text, plus access to sample syllabi for faculty and a detailed FAQ Addresses the differences in visual and narrative strategies between Hollywood-influenced movies and international cinema Highlights key words within the text and provides a comprehensive glossary of critical vocabulary for film studies Each chapter includes in-depth case studies of individual films and directors, cultural and historical context, selected filmographies, and ideas for projects, essays, and further research

Jia Zhangke Speaks Out

Jia Zhangke Speaks Out PDF Author: Jia Zhangke
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781626430303
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Jia Zhangke Speaks Out is a collection of writings by China’s most acclaimed film director, Jia Zhangke. The book, originally published in 2009 by Peking University Press, contains Jia’s selections of his own writings on film. While he has given numerous film-specific interviews throughout the years, his own notes on cinema, on his own production, and on Chinese culture are unknown to non-Chinese readers. This collection gives access to the key scenes of his life, films, and meetings with other filmmakers, from Hou Hsiao-hsien to Martin Scorsese. From his point of view, we get an insightful and profoundly original take on China’s film history, its ruptures and failings, as well as on the post-Tiananmen filmmaking industry, with its blockbusters on one side and indie films (like his) on the other.

Speaking in Images

Speaking in Images PDF Author: Michael Berry
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231133302
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
Interviews with Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and other Chinese directors about their work & the ways it has impacted both on the film industry in China as well as on the world scene.