Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China

Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China

Author: Chris Berry

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-06-01

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1135936471

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This book argues that the fundamental shift in Chinese Cinema away from Socialism and towards Post-Socialism can be located earlier than the emergence of the "Fifth Generation" in the mid-eighties when it is usually assumed to have occured. By close analysis of films from the 1949-1976 Maoist era in comparison with 1976-81 films representing the Cultural Revolution, it demonstrates that the latter already breaks away from Socialism.


Book Synopsis Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China by : Chris Berry

Download or read book Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China written by Chris Berry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the fundamental shift in Chinese Cinema away from Socialism and towards Post-Socialism can be located earlier than the emergence of the "Fifth Generation" in the mid-eighties when it is usually assumed to have occured. By close analysis of films from the 1949-1976 Maoist era in comparison with 1976-81 films representing the Cultural Revolution, it demonstrates that the latter already breaks away from Socialism.


New Chinese Cinemas

New Chinese Cinemas

Author: Nick Browne

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780521448772

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New Chinese Cinemas analyses the changing forms and significance of filmmaking in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since the end of the Cultural Revolution, with a particular emphasis on how film comments on the profound social changes that have occurred in East Asia over the past two decades. Considering in detail both conservative and progressive stances on economic 'modernisation', it also demonstrates how film has been an important formal structure and social document in the interpretation of these changes. The essays collected here, which were specially commissioned for this volume, also offer extended analyses of the important trends, styles and work that define Chinese filmmaking in the 1980s.


Book Synopsis New Chinese Cinemas by : Nick Browne

Download or read book New Chinese Cinemas written by Nick Browne and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Chinese Cinemas analyses the changing forms and significance of filmmaking in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since the end of the Cultural Revolution, with a particular emphasis on how film comments on the profound social changes that have occurred in East Asia over the past two decades. Considering in detail both conservative and progressive stances on economic 'modernisation', it also demonstrates how film has been an important formal structure and social document in the interpretation of these changes. The essays collected here, which were specially commissioned for this volume, also offer extended analyses of the important trends, styles and work that define Chinese filmmaking in the 1980s.


Ethnic Minority Children in Post-Socialist Chinese Cinema

Ethnic Minority Children in Post-Socialist Chinese Cinema

Author: Zhenhui Yan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-21

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1000762467

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This book examines the surprisingly large number of films about ethnic minority children in China, considering key questions such as Why are ethnic minority children becoming more intriguing to Chinese filmmakers? What are their roles in the films literally and allegorically? And how are they placed on screen geographically and why? It argues that ethnic minority children’s appeal lies in their special relationship with childhood, ethnicity, nationalism, and rurality; and that for dominant Han urban adults and elite ethnic minorities they serve as "the other" for these people’s construction of themselves as self-conscious modern subjects during China’s rapid social-political transformations. This book explores the diversity of ways in which both Han and ethnic minority filmmakers take up the special features of ethnic minority children to facilitate their expression of certain ideas or ideals, as well as the roles of these films in their directing careers.


Book Synopsis Ethnic Minority Children in Post-Socialist Chinese Cinema by : Zhenhui Yan

Download or read book Ethnic Minority Children in Post-Socialist Chinese Cinema written by Zhenhui Yan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the surprisingly large number of films about ethnic minority children in China, considering key questions such as Why are ethnic minority children becoming more intriguing to Chinese filmmakers? What are their roles in the films literally and allegorically? And how are they placed on screen geographically and why? It argues that ethnic minority children’s appeal lies in their special relationship with childhood, ethnicity, nationalism, and rurality; and that for dominant Han urban adults and elite ethnic minorities they serve as "the other" for these people’s construction of themselves as self-conscious modern subjects during China’s rapid social-political transformations. This book explores the diversity of ways in which both Han and ethnic minority filmmakers take up the special features of ethnic minority children to facilitate their expression of certain ideas or ideals, as well as the roles of these films in their directing careers.


Chinese Film

Chinese Film

Author: Jason McGrath

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2023-01-31

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1452968586

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A tour de force chronicling the development of realism in Chinese cinema The history of Chinese cinema is as long and complicated as the tumultuous history of China itself. Be it the silent, the Communist, or the contemporary, each Chinese cinematic era has necessitated its own form in conversation with broader trends in politics and culture. In Chinese Film, Jason McGrath tells this fascinating story by tracing the varied claims to cinematic realism made by Chinese filmmakers, officials, critics, and scholars. Understanding realism as a historical dynamic that is both enabled and mitigated by aesthetic conventions of the day, he analyzes it across six different types of claims: ontological, perceptual, fictional, social, prescriptive, and apophatic. Through this method, McGrath makes major claims not just about Chinese cinema but also about realism as an aesthetic form that negotiates between cultural conventions and the ever-evolving real. He comes to envision it as more than just a cinematic question, showing how the struggle for realism is central to the Chinese struggle for modernity itself.


Book Synopsis Chinese Film by : Jason McGrath

Download or read book Chinese Film written by Jason McGrath and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour de force chronicling the development of realism in Chinese cinema The history of Chinese cinema is as long and complicated as the tumultuous history of China itself. Be it the silent, the Communist, or the contemporary, each Chinese cinematic era has necessitated its own form in conversation with broader trends in politics and culture. In Chinese Film, Jason McGrath tells this fascinating story by tracing the varied claims to cinematic realism made by Chinese filmmakers, officials, critics, and scholars. Understanding realism as a historical dynamic that is both enabled and mitigated by aesthetic conventions of the day, he analyzes it across six different types of claims: ontological, perceptual, fictional, social, prescriptive, and apophatic. Through this method, McGrath makes major claims not just about Chinese cinema but also about realism as an aesthetic form that negotiates between cultural conventions and the ever-evolving real. He comes to envision it as more than just a cinematic question, showing how the struggle for realism is central to the Chinese struggle for modernity itself.


Screening Post-1989 China

Screening Post-1989 China

Author: W. Ho

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-20

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1137514701

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This unique book investigates the tug-of-war between the free market economy and authoritative state regulation in Chinese culture after 1989. Contextualizing close textual readings of cinematic and television texts, both officially sanctioned and independently made, Wing Shan Ho illuminates the complex process in which cultural producers and consumers negotiate with both the state and the market in articulating new forms of subjectivity. Ho examines the types of Chinese subjects that the state applauds and aggrandizes in contrast to those that it condemns and attempts to eliminate. Her focus on the socialist spirit exposes inherent contradictions in the current Chinese project of nation-building. This comparative study shines a harsh light on these cultural products and on much more: the confluence between commerce and politics and popular culture, the interaction between state and individuals in popular culture, and the complexity of governmentality in an era of globalization.


Book Synopsis Screening Post-1989 China by : W. Ho

Download or read book Screening Post-1989 China written by W. Ho and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book investigates the tug-of-war between the free market economy and authoritative state regulation in Chinese culture after 1989. Contextualizing close textual readings of cinematic and television texts, both officially sanctioned and independently made, Wing Shan Ho illuminates the complex process in which cultural producers and consumers negotiate with both the state and the market in articulating new forms of subjectivity. Ho examines the types of Chinese subjects that the state applauds and aggrandizes in contrast to those that it condemns and attempts to eliminate. Her focus on the socialist spirit exposes inherent contradictions in the current Chinese project of nation-building. This comparative study shines a harsh light on these cultural products and on much more: the confluence between commerce and politics and popular culture, the interaction between state and individuals in popular culture, and the complexity of governmentality in an era of globalization.


Information Fantasies

Information Fantasies

Author: Xiao Liu

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1452959498

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Winner of the Science Fiction Research Association Book Award​ A groundbreaking, alternate history of information technology and information discourses Although the scale of the information economy and the impact of digital media on social life in China today could pale that of any other country, the story of their emergence in the post-Mao sociopolitical environment remains untold. Information Fantasies offers a revisionist account of the emergence of the “information society,” arguing that it was not determined by the technology of digitization alone but developed out of a set of techno-cultural imaginations and practices that arrived alongside postsocialism. Anticipating discussions on information surveillance, data collection, and precarious labor conditions today, Xiao Liu goes far beyond the current scholarship on internet and digital culture in China, questioning the limits of current new-media theory and history, while also salvaging postsocialism from the persistent Cold War structure of knowledge production. Ranging over forgotten science fiction, unjustly neglected films, corporeal practices such as qigong, scientific journals, advertising, and cybernetic theories, Information Fantasies constructs an alternate genealogy of digital and information imaginaries—one that will change how we look at the development of the postsocialist world and the emergence of digital technologies.


Book Synopsis Information Fantasies by : Xiao Liu

Download or read book Information Fantasies written by Xiao Liu and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Science Fiction Research Association Book Award​ A groundbreaking, alternate history of information technology and information discourses Although the scale of the information economy and the impact of digital media on social life in China today could pale that of any other country, the story of their emergence in the post-Mao sociopolitical environment remains untold. Information Fantasies offers a revisionist account of the emergence of the “information society,” arguing that it was not determined by the technology of digitization alone but developed out of a set of techno-cultural imaginations and practices that arrived alongside postsocialism. Anticipating discussions on information surveillance, data collection, and precarious labor conditions today, Xiao Liu goes far beyond the current scholarship on internet and digital culture in China, questioning the limits of current new-media theory and history, while also salvaging postsocialism from the persistent Cold War structure of knowledge production. Ranging over forgotten science fiction, unjustly neglected films, corporeal practices such as qigong, scientific journals, advertising, and cybernetic theories, Information Fantasies constructs an alternate genealogy of digital and information imaginaries—one that will change how we look at the development of the postsocialist world and the emergence of digital technologies.


Chinese Films in Focus II

Chinese Films in Focus II

Author: Chris Berry

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 760

ISBN-13: 1838714979

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Chinese cinema continues to go from strength to strength. After art-house hits like Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984) and Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000), the Oscar-winning success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) disproved the old myth that subtitled films could not succeed at the multiplex. Chinese Films in Focus II updates and expands the original Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes with fourteen brand new essays, to offer thirty-four fresh and insightful readings of key individual films. The new edition addresses films from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other parts of the Chinese diaspora and the historical coverage ranges from the 1930s to the present. The essays, by leading authorities on Chinese cinema as well as up-and-coming scholars, are concise, accessible, rich, and on the cutting edge of current research. Each contributor outlines existing writing and presents an original perspective on the film, making this volume a rich resource for classroom use, scholarly research and general reading for anyone wanting to understand more about the historical development and rich variety of Chinese cinema. Contributors: Annette Aw, Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, Felicia Chan, Esther Cheung, Robert Chi, Rey Chow, Mary Farquhar, Carolyn FitzGerald, Ping Fu, Kristine Harris, Margaret Hillenbrand, Brian Hu, Tan See Kam, Haiyan Lee, Vivian Lee, Helen Hok-Sze Leung, David Leiwei Li, Song Hwee Lim, Kam Louie, Fran Martin, Jason McGrath, Corrado Neri, Jonathan Noble, Beremoce Reynaud, Cui Shuqin, Julian Stringer, Janice Tong, Yiman Wang, Faye Hui Xiao, Gang Gary Xu, Audrey Yue, Yingjin Zhang, John Zou The Editor: Chris Berry is Professor of Film and Television at Goldsmiths, University of London.


Book Synopsis Chinese Films in Focus II by : Chris Berry

Download or read book Chinese Films in Focus II written by Chris Berry and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese cinema continues to go from strength to strength. After art-house hits like Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984) and Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000), the Oscar-winning success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) disproved the old myth that subtitled films could not succeed at the multiplex. Chinese Films in Focus II updates and expands the original Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes with fourteen brand new essays, to offer thirty-four fresh and insightful readings of key individual films. The new edition addresses films from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other parts of the Chinese diaspora and the historical coverage ranges from the 1930s to the present. The essays, by leading authorities on Chinese cinema as well as up-and-coming scholars, are concise, accessible, rich, and on the cutting edge of current research. Each contributor outlines existing writing and presents an original perspective on the film, making this volume a rich resource for classroom use, scholarly research and general reading for anyone wanting to understand more about the historical development and rich variety of Chinese cinema. Contributors: Annette Aw, Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, Felicia Chan, Esther Cheung, Robert Chi, Rey Chow, Mary Farquhar, Carolyn FitzGerald, Ping Fu, Kristine Harris, Margaret Hillenbrand, Brian Hu, Tan See Kam, Haiyan Lee, Vivian Lee, Helen Hok-Sze Leung, David Leiwei Li, Song Hwee Lim, Kam Louie, Fran Martin, Jason McGrath, Corrado Neri, Jonathan Noble, Beremoce Reynaud, Cui Shuqin, Julian Stringer, Janice Tong, Yiman Wang, Faye Hui Xiao, Gang Gary Xu, Audrey Yue, Yingjin Zhang, John Zou The Editor: Chris Berry is Professor of Film and Television at Goldsmiths, University of London.


Rebel Men

Rebel Men

Author: Pamela Hunt

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2022-05-10

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 988875405X

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Masculinity, fast-changing and regularly declared to be in the throes of crisis, is attracting more popular and scholarly debate in China than ever before. At the same time, Chinese literature since 1989 has been characterized as brimming with countercultural ‘attitude’. This book probes the link between literary rebellion and manhood in China, showing how, as male writers critique the outcomes of decades of market reform, they also ask the same question: how best to be a man in the new postsocialist order? In this first full-length discussion of masculinity in post-1989 Chinese literature, Pamela Hunt offers a detailed analysis of four contemporary authors in particular: Zhu Wen, Feng Tang, Xu Zechen, and Han Han. In a series of insightful readings, she explores how all four writers show the same preoccupation with the figure of the man on the edges of society. Drawing on longstanding Chinese and global models of maverick, as well as marginal masculinity, and responding to a desire to retain a measure of masculine authority, their characters all engage in forms of transgression that still rely heavily on heteronormative and patriarchal values. Rebel Men argues that masculinity, so often overlooked in literary analysis of contemporary China, continues to be renegotiated, debated, and agonized over, and is ultimately reconstructed as more powerful than before. ‘An exceptionally lucid, elegant study of masculinity in mainland Chinese fiction of the 1990s and 2000s. Both historically and theoretically informed, Rebel Men: Masculinity and Attitude in Postsocialist Chinese Literature offers a major new perspective on post-1989 Chinese counterculture.’ —Julia Lovell, Birkbeck, University of London


Book Synopsis Rebel Men by : Pamela Hunt

Download or read book Rebel Men written by Pamela Hunt and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masculinity, fast-changing and regularly declared to be in the throes of crisis, is attracting more popular and scholarly debate in China than ever before. At the same time, Chinese literature since 1989 has been characterized as brimming with countercultural ‘attitude’. This book probes the link between literary rebellion and manhood in China, showing how, as male writers critique the outcomes of decades of market reform, they also ask the same question: how best to be a man in the new postsocialist order? In this first full-length discussion of masculinity in post-1989 Chinese literature, Pamela Hunt offers a detailed analysis of four contemporary authors in particular: Zhu Wen, Feng Tang, Xu Zechen, and Han Han. In a series of insightful readings, she explores how all four writers show the same preoccupation with the figure of the man on the edges of society. Drawing on longstanding Chinese and global models of maverick, as well as marginal masculinity, and responding to a desire to retain a measure of masculine authority, their characters all engage in forms of transgression that still rely heavily on heteronormative and patriarchal values. Rebel Men argues that masculinity, so often overlooked in literary analysis of contemporary China, continues to be renegotiated, debated, and agonized over, and is ultimately reconstructed as more powerful than before. ‘An exceptionally lucid, elegant study of masculinity in mainland Chinese fiction of the 1990s and 2000s. Both historically and theoretically informed, Rebel Men: Masculinity and Attitude in Postsocialist Chinese Literature offers a major new perspective on post-1989 Chinese counterculture.’ —Julia Lovell, Birkbeck, University of London


Red Legacies in China

Red Legacies in China

Author: Jie Li

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-10-26

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 1684171172

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What has contemporary China inherited from its revolutionary past? How do the realities and memories, aesthetics and practices of the Mao era still reverberate in the post-Mao cultural landscape? The essays in this volume propose “red legacies” as a new critical framework from which to examine the profusion of cultural productions and afterlives of the communist revolution in order to understand China’s continuities and transformations from socialism to postsocialism. Organized into five parts—red foundations, red icons, red classics, red bodies, and red shadows—the book’s interdisciplinary contributions focus on visual and performing arts, literature and film, language and thought, architecture, museums, and memorials. Mediating at once unfulfilled ideals and unmourned ghosts across generations, red cultural legacies suggest both inheritance and debt, and can be mobilized to support as well as to critique the status quo.


Book Synopsis Red Legacies in China by : Jie Li

Download or read book Red Legacies in China written by Jie Li and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What has contemporary China inherited from its revolutionary past? How do the realities and memories, aesthetics and practices of the Mao era still reverberate in the post-Mao cultural landscape? The essays in this volume propose “red legacies” as a new critical framework from which to examine the profusion of cultural productions and afterlives of the communist revolution in order to understand China’s continuities and transformations from socialism to postsocialism. Organized into five parts—red foundations, red icons, red classics, red bodies, and red shadows—the book’s interdisciplinary contributions focus on visual and performing arts, literature and film, language and thought, architecture, museums, and memorials. Mediating at once unfulfilled ideals and unmourned ghosts across generations, red cultural legacies suggest both inheritance and debt, and can be mobilized to support as well as to critique the status quo.


Internet Literature in China

Internet Literature in China

Author: Michel Hockx

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-02-10

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0231538537

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Since the 1990s, Chinese literary enthusiasts have explored new spaces for creative expression online, giving rise to a modern genre that has transformed Chinese culture and society. Ranging from the self-consciously avant-garde to the pornographic, web-based writing has introduced innovative forms, themes, and practices into Chinese literature and its aesthetic traditions. Conducting the first comprehensive survey in English of this phenomenon, Michel Hockx describes in detail the types of Chinese literature taking shape right now online and their novel aesthetic, political, and ideological challenges. Offering a unique portal into postsocialist Chinese culture, he presents a complex portrait of internet culture and control in China that avoids one-dimensional representations of oppression. The Chinese government still strictly regulates the publishing world, yet it is growing increasingly tolerant of internet literature and its publishing practices while still drawing a clear yet ever-shifting ideological bottom line. Hockx interviews online authors, publishers, and censors, capturing the convergence of mass media, creativity, censorship, and free speech that is upending traditional hierarchies and conventions within China—and across Asia.


Book Synopsis Internet Literature in China by : Michel Hockx

Download or read book Internet Literature in China written by Michel Hockx and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1990s, Chinese literary enthusiasts have explored new spaces for creative expression online, giving rise to a modern genre that has transformed Chinese culture and society. Ranging from the self-consciously avant-garde to the pornographic, web-based writing has introduced innovative forms, themes, and practices into Chinese literature and its aesthetic traditions. Conducting the first comprehensive survey in English of this phenomenon, Michel Hockx describes in detail the types of Chinese literature taking shape right now online and their novel aesthetic, political, and ideological challenges. Offering a unique portal into postsocialist Chinese culture, he presents a complex portrait of internet culture and control in China that avoids one-dimensional representations of oppression. The Chinese government still strictly regulates the publishing world, yet it is growing increasingly tolerant of internet literature and its publishing practices while still drawing a clear yet ever-shifting ideological bottom line. Hockx interviews online authors, publishers, and censors, capturing the convergence of mass media, creativity, censorship, and free speech that is upending traditional hierarchies and conventions within China—and across Asia.