A Companion to Chinese Cinema E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: CNCZ - The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1498

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A Companion to Chinese Cinema is a collection of original essays written by experts in a range of disciplines that provide a comprehensive overview of the evolution and current state of Chinese cinema. * Represents the most comprehensive coverage of Chinese cinema to date * Applies a multidisciplinary approach that maps the expanding field of Chinese cinema in bold and definitive ways * Draws attention to previously neglected areas such as diasporic filmmaking, independent documentary, film styles and techniques, queer aesthetics, star studies, film and other arts or media * Features several chapters that explore China's new market economy, government policy, and industry practice, placing the intricate relationship between film and politics in a historical and international context * Includes overviews of Chinese film studies in Chinese and English publications

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgments

Figures

Tables

Contributors

1 General Introduction

Part I: History and Geography

Part II: Industry and Institution

Part III: Genre and Representation

Part IV: Arts and Media

Part V: Issues and Debates

Looking Forward: Chinese Cinema in Comparative Film Studies

Part I History and Geography

2 Transplanting Melodrama

Introduction: Retracing Chinese Melodrama

Lost and Found: Hou Yao and Shanghai Cinema

Griffith Fever and Vernacular Melodrama

Conclusion

3 Artists, Cadres, and Audiences

Continuity and Change: Crossing the 1949 Divide

New Rules and Directions

Expanding Studios and Audiences

Representative Works of Socialist Cinema

The Cultural Revolution: Disruption and Growth

Aftermath and Recovery

4 Directors, Aesthetics, Genres

Directors: Problems in a Generational Lineup

Aesthetics: Of Avant-Garde Experiment and International Reception

Genres: Between Critical Intervention and Commercial Repackaging

Conclusion: After Seismic Changes

5 Hong Kong Cinema Before 1980

Introduction

Periodization

Nationalization

Orientations

Prospects

6 The Hong Kong New Wave

Was There anything “New” about the Hong Kong New Wave?3

The Portrait of the Filmmaker as a Young (Wo)Man

Performing Women

The Return of the Sword

Queer Connections

The Return of the Real

The Hong Kong New Wave and the World

7 Gender Negotiation in Song Cunshou’s Story of Mother and Taiwan Cinema of the Early 1970s

8 Second Coming

Introducing Taiwan New Cinema

Xiangtu (Nativist) Style, Beyond Literary Adaptation

Censoring/Censuring New Cinema

Maturity and Mannerism in the 1990s

From Xiangtu to Bentu, Nativism to Localism

Cape No. 7: A New Era for Popular Taiwan Movies?

New Cinema’s Afterlife

Part II Industry and Institution

9 Propaganda and Censorship in Chinese Cinema

Anti-Imperialism, Internationalization, and Mass Mobilization: The Rise of the Propaganda State

From Cold-War Culture Industries to Commercial “Soft Power”

Soft Power: Cultural Security and Global Economy

10 Chinese Media Capital in Global Context

Media Capital

Rise and Fall of the Chinese Movie Business

Transformation of the Television Industry

Western Competitors and Mainland Markets

Conclusion

11 Film and Society in China

An Overview of the Film Audience

The Increasing Importance of the Box Office in China

An Overview of Chinese Box-Office Data

Government Strategies in the Development of the Chinese Film Industry: State Initiatives and Societal Responses

Conclusion

12 Vulnerable Chinese Stars

Introduction

The Definition of Chinese Stars

Star Power versus Star Vulnerability

Stars as Xizi and Film Workers

Stars as Moral Victims

Stars as Political Subordinates

Chinese Stardom versus Hollywood-Oriented Star Theories

13 Ports of Entry

Writing Narratives of Chinese Cinema History

Constructing a New Narrative: Port City Film Festivals

Conclusion

Part III Genre and Representation

14 In Search of Chinese Film Style(s) and Technique(s)

15 Film Genre and Chinese Cinema

Introduction: “Does Chinese production even have genres?”

Of Names and National Identity

Conclusion

16 Performing Documentation

17 Chinese Women’s Cinema

Initial Stage: Chinese Women’s Engagement with Filmmaking, 1920s–1940s

A New Beginning: Chinese Woman Directors in the 1950s

Development of Women’s Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s

Transformation and Reshaping of Chinese Women’s Cinema since the 1980s

Conclusion

18 From Urban Films to Urban Cinema

Urban Films: Major Themes and Concerns

Toward a Distinct Visual Idiom

The Emergence of Urban Cinema as a Subject of Discourse

Genre Trouble

The New Urban Cinema

Part IV Arts and Media

19 The Intertwinement of Chinese Film and Literature

Scholarship on Adaptation Studies

What Literary Sources have been Preferred and Why

The “Fidelity” Issue and the Status of Film vis-à-vis Literature

Concluding Remarks: Writers’ Films?

20 Diary of a Homecoming

Cinema’s Undesirable Other: Theater, Medium-Specificity, and Intermediality

Under the Eaves of Chongqing: The Politics of Intermedial Reference

Disenchanted Homecoming: Homelessness, Entrapment, and Provincializing Shanghai

Diary of a Homecoming: The Ecstasy of Flying Vegetables

Conclusion

21 Cinema and the Visual Arts of China

22 From Mountain Songs to Silvery Moonlight

23 Cross-Fertilization in Chinese Cinema and Television

Introduction

Chinese Cinema and Television

China Film Group

CCTV-6

From Cross-Fertilization to Consolidation: Media Policy as Geostrategy

24 Chinese Cinema and Technology

Early Cinema and Laborer’s Love

Laborer’s Love: Fascination with Early Film Technology

The Sound Film and Street Angel

1940s Cinema, Fei Mu, and Spring in a Small Town

1949 and Beyond

Part V Issues and Debates

25 Chinese Film Scholarship in Chinese

Pre-1949 Scholarship

Scholarship from 1949 to the Late 1970s

Scholarship from the Late 1970s through the 1990s

The New Century

Conclusion

26 Chinese Film Scholarship in English

Prehistory: Bilingual Scholars

1980s: Monolingual Readers

1990s: The Hegemony of Film Studies

Since 2000: The Transnational Turn and More

27 The Return of the Repressed

The Anxiety of Masculinity

Returning to History, Revising Historiography

Family Melodrama and the Search for Masculinity

Conclusion

28 Homosexuality and Queer Aesthetics

Introduction: The New Queer Chinese Cinema

Queer Mainstreaming

Queer Auteurs

Queer Docs

Conclusion

29 Alter-centering Chinese Cinema

Pre-World War II Diasporic Filmmakers Inside and Outside the Sinophone Area

World War II and Civil War Migration

Flexible Filmmaking: Hong Kong, China, and the Global Turn

Shuttling In-Between, Going Nonmainstream, and Creolizing the Sinophone

Conclusion

30 The Absent American

The [Chinese-]American Cometh: From Love on Lushan to The Herdsman

Prescription for Absence: Defining the Tropes

Left for America: Invisible Immigration in After Separation, Those Left Behind, and The Days

Departures and Returns

Conclusion

Bibliography

Filmography

Index

Wiley-Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas

The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas showcase the rich film heritages of various countries across the globe. Each volume sets the agenda for what is now known as world cinema whilst challenging Hollywood’s lock on the popular and scholarly imagination. Whether exploring Spanish, German, or Chinese film, or the broader traditions of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and Latin America, the 20–25 newly commissioned essays comprising each volume include coverage of the dominant themes of canonical, controversial, and contemporary films; stars, directors, and writers; key influences; reception; and historiography and scholarship. Written in a sophisticated and authoritative style by leading experts they will appeal to an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.

Published:

A Companion to German Cinema, edited by Terri Ginsberg & Andrea Mensch

A Companion to Chinese Cinema, edited by Yingjin Zhang

A Companion to Eastern European Cinema, edited by Aniko Imre

Forthcoming:

A Companion to Spanish Cinema, edited by Jo Labanyi & Tatjana Pavlovic

A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, edited by Raphaelle Moine, Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox, & Michel Marie

A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Gina Marchetti, Esther Yau, and Esther Cheung

A Companion to Italian Cinema, edited by Frank Burke

This edition first published 2012© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to Chinese cinema / edited by Yingjin Zhang.p. cm. – (Wiley-Blackwell companions to national cinemas)Includes bibliographical references and index.Includes filmography.

ISBN 978-1-4443-3029-8 (hardback : alk. paper)1. Motion pictures–China–History–20th century. 2. Motion pictures–China–History–21st century. I. Zhang, Yingjin.PN1993.5.C4C66 2012791.430951–dc23

2011041433

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Acknowledgments

As this book seeks to provide an overview of Chinese cinema over a hundred years and collectively looks to the future, I would like to express my appreciation of all who have contributed to the development of Chinese cinema and to the field of Chinese film studies around the world. I commend scholars whose collective work has made this project possible, and I acknowledge in particular my 28 contributors for their enthusiasm, cooperation, and patience. A book of this size takes years to complete. As with my previous books, I thank the University of California, San Diego (especially the Academic Senate Committee on Research and the Division of Art and Humanities) for awarding me several research grants, as well as my colleagues and friends in San Diego and elsewhere for sharing my interest in moving the interdisciplinary scholarship forward. I am grateful to the anonymous press reviewers of this book’s proposal and manuscript for their endorsements and suggestions; to Jayne Fargnoli and other editors at Wiley-Blackwell for their confidence and guidance along the way; to James Wicks for his meticulous and timely assistance at the initial stage; and to Angie Chau for her diligent work at the production stage. Last but not least, I owe my deepest appreciation to my family – Jean and Alex on the Pacific coast and Mimi on the Atlantic coast – for their unfading love and support in all these years.

Figures

2.1

Li Dandan and Lin Chuchu in Minxin’s Mulan Joins the Army (dir. Hou Yao, Minxin Film, 1928), a popular tale of a cross-dressing female warrior.

3.1

The peasant protagonists of the People’s Commune comedy Li Shuangshuang (dir. Lu Ren, Haiyan Studio, 1962).

3.2

The militia heroine of Haixia (dir. Qian Jiang et al., Beijing Studio, 1975) confronts her class enemy.

4.1

A teenage wife (Na Renhua) and her toddler husband in A Girl from Hunan (dir. Xie Fei, Youth Studio, 1985).

5.1

“… that’s why I’m dressed as a man”: In That’s for My Love (dir. Chiang Wai-kwong, Huixia Film, 1953), Yam Kim-fai (left) plays a retired Cantonese opera actress who pretends to be the fiancé of her brother’s ex-girlfriend.

6.1

A portrait of the female artist in Song of the Exile (dir. Ann Hui, Cos Group, 1990), a semi-autobiographic film.

6.2

Hong Kong’s cityscape turned upside down in Happy Together (dir. Wong Kar-wai, Jet Tone, 1997).

7.1

Ms. Du (Lin Fengjiao) reads Headmaster Du’s (Wang Yin) letter in Land of the Undaunted (dir. Li Xing, CMPC, 1975).

9.1

Memorial and ashes of Sun Yat-sen, erected immediately following the revolutionary leader’s death in 1925. From The National Revolutionary Army’s War on Sea, Land, and Air (dir. Li Minwei, Minxin Film, 1927).

9.2

Chiang Kai-shek takes command of the Northern Expedition. From The National Revolutionary Army’s War on Sea, Land, and Air (dir. Li Minwei, Minxin Film, 1927).

9.3

The People’s Liberation Army fights brigandry and oppression, and relies on the masses. From Coming Back to Their Own Unit (dir. Cheng Yin, Northeast Studio, 1949).

9.4

Mao Zedong as master strategist, prior to the fall of Yan’an and relocation of the Central Committee to North China. From Return Our Yan’an (dir. Cheng Mo, Qian Xiaozhang, Northeast Film Team, 1948).

9.5

Tiananmen as an early symbol of CCP political authority: General Ye Jianying addresses a crowd on February 3, 1949, immediately following the surrender of Beiping (Beijing) by the Nationalist army. From Beiping Entrance Ceremony (dir. Wu Guoying, Northeast Studio, 1949).

12.1

Bruce Lee, an enduring global martial arts icon, in a triumphant pose in Fist of Fury (dir. Lo Wei, Golden Harvest, 1972).

12.2

Jackie Chan as young Wong Fei-hong, training literally under his shifu in Drunken Master (dir. Yuen Ho-ping, Seasonal Films, 1978).

12.3

Leslie Cheung as a sentimental, moody playboy in Days of Being Wild (dir. Wong Kar-wai, In-Gear Film, 1990).

13.1

Gong Li as Wife No. 4, faking pregnancy in Raise the Red Lantern (dir. Zhang Yimou, Era, 1991).

14.1

A defiant look from the tragic silent movie star Ruan Lingyu in The Goddess (dir. Wu Yonggang, Lianghua Film, 1934).

14.2

Ruan Lingyu as the caring mother prostitute watching her son doing homework in The Goddess (dir. Wu Yonggang, Lianghua Film, 1934).

14.3

A scene of strong chiaroscuro with power outage in Spring in a Small Town (dir. Fei Mu, Wehnhua Film, 1947).

14.4

Emphatic cut-in to a medium close-up of the husband in Spring in a Small Town (dir. Fei Mu, Wehnhua Film, 1947).

15.1

Opera film Dream of the Red Chamber (dir. Cen Fan, Shanghai Studio, 1962), featuring an all-female cast vocalized in Shanghainese, coproduced by Shanghai and Hong Kong, with Zhu Shilin as artistic advisor.

16.1

A close interaction kept invisible: Wu cooking for and being filmed by his subjects in Jiang Hu (dir. Wu Wenguang, 1999).

16.2

A close interaction kept invisible: Wu playing with and being filmed by his subjects in Jiang Hu (dir. Wu Wenguang, 1999).

16.3

Wu Wenguang, camera in hand, flashlight in mouth, with Wen Hui in Dress/Video (1997).

17.1

A photograph of the early Chinese-American woman director Esther Eng, dated October 1928.

17.2

An actress (Pei Yanling) performing Zhongkui the male demon, encounters her stage counterpart in Woman Demon Human (dir. Huang Shuqin, Shanghai Studio, 1987).

17.3

A scene of female intimacy in Fish and Elephant (dir. Li Yu, 2001), reputedly the first lesbian film in mainland China.

17.4

Repressed love: an emotional moment when the female protagonist treats her male patient/love interest in Army Nurse (dir. Hu Mei, August First Studio, 1985).

17.5

Mother and daughter caught in a series of conflicts in Song of the Exile (dir. Ann Hui, 1990).

17.6

Two Hong Kong sojourners struggle to make a living in An Autumn’s Tale (dir. Mabel Cheung, Cos Group, 1987).

17.7

Searching for lost memories and romance in The Strait Story (dir. Huang Yu-shan, B & W Film, 2005).

17.8

Showcasing female solidarity in Splendid Float (dir. Zero Chou, Zeho Illusion, 2004).

19.1

Mourning an untimely death in To Live (dir. Zhang Yimou, Era, 1994).

19.2

An old policeman witnessing Beijing’s deterioration in This Life of Mine (dir. Shi Hui, Wenhua Film, 1950).

20.1

Shadows in the domestic interior in The Spring Cannot Be Shut In (dir. Wang Weiyi, Kunlun Film, 1948).

20.2

A heavy-handed montage sequence in Dream in Paradise (dir. Tang Xiaodan, Zhongdian Studio 2, 1947).

20.3

A flying carrot caught in slow motion in Diary of a Homecoming (dir. Zhang Junxiang, Zhongdian Studio 1, 1947).

20.4

Shadow play with a resurrected sculpture in Diary of a Homecoming (dir. Zhang Junxiang, Zhongdian Studio 1, 1947).

21.1

Miners in Blind Shaft (Tang Splendor, 2003): director Li Yang, cinematographer Liu Yonghong.

21.2

Geng Yunsheng’s “Miners at Wusheng Mountain” (2003).

22.1

Folk wisdom triumphs in a mountain song competition in Third Sister Liu (dir. Su Li, Changchun Studio, 1960).

22.2

Lovers reunited to fight against evil in a model ballet film, The White-Haired Girl (dir. Sang Hu, Shanghai Studio, 1973).

24.1

Two sisters alarmed by a sound in Street Angel (dir. Yuan Muzhi, Mingxing Film, 1937).

24.2

Under the candlelight in Spring in a Small Town (dir. Fei Mu, Wenhua Film, 1947), tormented love continues.

26.1

Lunch break from field work in Yellow Earth (dir. Chen Kaige, Guangxi Studio, 1984); the low-angle shot reveals an empty sky.

27.1

A flashback in Lust, Caution (dir. Ang Lee, Focus Features, 2007): Tang Wei as an innocent, manipulated agent.

27.2

Singing a folk song in Lust, Caution (dir. Ang Lee, Focus Features, 2007): “I search and search for my heart’s companion.”

27.3

The titular bride in Tuya’s Marriage (dir. Wang Quan’an, Huaxia Film, 2006): a Mongolian woman struggling to support her crippled husband.

27.4

A red bed in In Love We Trust (dir. Wang Xiaoshuai, Debo Film, 2008): a divorced husband and wife try to save their dying child.

28.1

A tangled love relationship in Amphetamine (dir. Scud, Artwalker, 2010), a queer exploration of sexuality and addiction.

28.2

Sitting at the railway station in Drifting Flowers (dir. Zero Chou, The Third Vision Films, 2008), a queer film exploring the dynamics of queer friendship.

29.1

Orphan Island Paradise (dir. Cai Chusheng, Dadi Film, 1939): the protagonists performing a duet in front of a back-projected Shanghai Bund landscape.

29.2

Against London’s picture-perfect cityscape of Big Ben and the House of Commons in She, A Chinese (dir. Xiaolu Guo, UK Film Council, 2009).

30.1

Transnational romance: Geng Hua (Guo Kaimin) and Zhou Yun (Zhang Yu) in Love on Lushan (dir. Huang Zumo, Shanghai Studio, 1980).

30.2

Geng Hua (“China”) reciting in English “I love the morning of my motherland” in Love on Lushan (dir. Huang Zumo, Shanghai Studio, 1980).

30.3

Forsaking the Father for the Motherland: Xu Lingjun (Zhu Shimao) seeing off his father Xu Jingshan (Liu Qiong) in The Herdsman (dir. Xie Jin, Shanghai Studio, 1982).

Tables

7.1

Story of Mother sequence breakdown

8.1

Number of films released in Taiwan, 1995–2010

9.1

Individual commercial press titles by year, 1917–27

9.2

Individual documentary, newsreel, and actualité titles by year, 1921–9

9.3

Individual film titles released by KMT-Affiliated Studios, 1938–45

9.4

Beijing-produced films (as numbers of reels), 1949–55

11.1

The top box-office hits in China (as of April 17, 2011)

11.2

The New Year and Anniversary films of Feng Xiaogang

13.1

Chinese cinema at international film festivals: key milestones

13.2

Chinese cinema at the Cannes International Film Festival

13.3

Chinese cinema at the Venice International Film Festival

13.4

Chinese cinema at the International Film Festival Rotterdam

13.5

Chinese cinema at the Pusan International Film Festival

13.6

Chinese cinema at the Tokyo International Film Festival

13.7

Chinese cinema at the Berlin International Film Festival

14.1

A sample of fourteen Chinese films from 1933 to 1948

23.1

China Film Group corporate structure

Contributors

Weihong Bao is Assistant Professor of Chinese Cinema and Media Culture at Columbia University, USA. She is completing a book manuscript entitled Dances of Fire: Aesthetic Affect and the Intermediation of Chinese Cinema, 1884–1945. She has started a second book project on the historical interaction between theater and cinema in twentieth-century China, tentatively entitled The Shadowy Theater of Chinese Cinema. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Camera Obscura, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Modern Chinese Literature, 19th Century Theatre and Film, and Opera Quarterly. Chris Berry is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. He is the author of Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China (2004); co-author of China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (2006); editor of Chinese Films in Focus II (2008); and co-editor of Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia (2003), Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (2005), TV China (2008), Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia (2009), Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and Social Space (2010), and The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement (2010). Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of Speaking in Images (2005), A History of Pain (2008), and Jia Zhangke’sThe Hometown Trilogy (2009). He is also the English translator of several Chinese novels, including Wild Kids (2000), Nanjing 1937 (2002), To Live (2004), and The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008). Yomi Braester is Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He is the author of Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China (2003) and Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract (2010); and co-editor of Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia (2010). Robert Chi teaches in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. His research and teaching involves Chinese cinema in the broadest sense. His writings on topics such as memory, documentary, exhibitionism, the Chinese national anthem, and the Nanjing Massacre have appeared in academic journals and critical volumes in Chinese, English, and Italian. Paul Clark has been Professor of Chinese at University of Auckland, New Zealand since 1993. Earlier he spent ten years as a Research Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, where he helped program the Hawaii International Film Festival. He is the author of Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 (1987), Reinventing China: A Generation and Its Films (2005), and The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History (2008); and co-editor of China and New Zealand (2003). His next book is China Youth Cultures: Red Guards to Netizens, 1968, 1988, 2008 (forthcoming). Shuqin Cui is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College, USA. She is the author of Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema (2003). She has also published many journal articles and book chapters on various topics in Chinese cinema. Her research and teaching interests include cinema, gender, and literature. She is currently working on a manuscript tentatively entitled The Absence of Presence: An Exploration of Women’s Experimental Art in Contemporary China. Michael Curtin is Mellichamp Professor of Global Media Studies and Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of Redeeming the Wasteland: Television Documentary and Cold War Politics (1995), Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (2007), and co-author of The American Television Industry (2009). He is completing work on Media Capital: The Cultural Geography of Globalization. He is co-editor of the “International Screen Industries” book series for the British Film Institute and co-editor of the Chinese Journal of Communication. Darrell William Davis is a Visiting Associate Professor in Visual Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is author of Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film (1996), co-author of Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island (2005) and East Asian Screen Industries (2008), and co-editor of Cinema Taiwan: Politics, Popularity and State of the Arts (2007). He is working on a book about East Asian ethnicity and technology. Matthew D. Johnson is Assistant Professor of History at Grinnell College, USA. His research interests are cultural institutions, the international history of propaganda, sovereignty and “national image,” and twentieth-century state bureaucracies. He is co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, “Exhibiting Chinese Cinemas,” and is working on a manuscript entitled Before Soft Power: Political Communication and Cultural Diplomacy in China – The Motion Picture, 1927–1972. Nikki J. Y. Lee received her PhD in cultural studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. She has taught at Yonsei University and the Korean National University of Arts. Her research interests cover transnational East Asian cinemas, and South Korean cinema and popular culture. She has published several articles in journals such as Cinema Journal. She is co-editor of a forthcoming volume, The Korean Cinema Book. Helen Hok-Sze Leung received her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA and is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is the author of Undercurrents: Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong (2008) and has published widely on queer cinema and cultural politics in anthologies such as New Queer Cinema (2004), Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema (2005), and Chinese Films in Focus II (2008), as well as in journals such as Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Positions. Gina Marchetti is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Her first book, Romance and the“Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (1993), won the award for best book in cultural studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. Recently, she has authored From Tian’anmen to Times Square: Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens (2006), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s INFERNAL AFFAIRS – The Trilogy (2007), and co-edited Hong Kong Film, Hollywood and the New Global Cinema (2007). Liyan Qin received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, USA and currently teaches in the Institute of Comparative Literature and Culture at Peking University (Beijing), China. She specializes in Chinese cinema and literature as well as Chinese–English literary relations. Apart from Chinese translations of English books by J. Hillis Miller and Yingjin Zhang, she has published chapters in English volumes, The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (2006) and Art, Politics, and Commerce inChinese Cinema (2010). She writes a film column for WritersMagazine. Bruce Robinson is a photographer and editor of scholarly works on subjects in Chinese media and society and is based in Austin, Texas, USA. Stanley Rosen is Director of the East Asian Studies Center and Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California, USA, specializing in Chinese politics and society. His most recent works include two co-edited volumes, State and Society in 21st Century China (second edition, 2009) and Art, Politics, and Commerce inChinese Cinema (2010). Jerome Silbergeld is P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History at Princeton University, USA. He has published more than sixty books, articles, and book chapters on traditional and modern Chinese painting, gardens, and cinema. His books include Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the Chinese Painter Li Huasheng (1993), China Into Film (1999), Hitchcock With a Chinese Face (2004), Body in Question: Image and Illusion in Two Chinese Films by Director Jiang Wen (2008), Outside In: Contemporary x Chinese xAmericanArt (2009), and Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography (2009). Julian Stringer is Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has published widely on East Asian cinema, film festivals, and transnational cinema. His edited or co-edited books include Movie Blockbusters (2003), New Korean Cinema (2005), Japanese Cinema (2007), and Global Chinese Cinema: The Culture and Politics of “Hero” (2009). He organized a conference on “Moving Images and the Digital Eco-City” at ZED pavilion, Shanghai Expo, October 2010. Stephen Teo used to work as a fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore and is now an Associate Professor in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author of Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (1997), Wong Kar-wai (2005), King Hu’s “A Touch of Zen” (2007), Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film (2007), and The Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition (2010). James Udden is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Gettysburg College, USA, where he has created a new program in film studies. He is the author of No Man an Island: Hou Hsiao-hsien and the Aesthetics of Experience (2009) and has published extensively on Asian cinema in journals such as Asian Cinema, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, and Post Script, as well as in two recent anthologies: The Cinema of Small Nations (2007) and Cinema Taiwan (2007). Lingzhen Wang is Associate Professor of Chinese at Brown University, USA. Her first book, Personal Matters: Women’s Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth-Century China (2004), centers on Chinese women’s life and writing in relation to dominant discourses of Chinese modernity – nationalism, revolution, socialism, and market commodification. Her second major research project focuses on gender, transnational feminist theory, and Chinese visual modernity, examining particularly the role of female film directors in constructing mainstream Chinese cinema and negotiating gendered and alternative imaginations in the second half of the twentieth century. Qi Wang is Assistant Professor in Film in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. She received her MS in comparative media studies from MIT and her PhD in cinema and media studies from UCLA. Her current book project, Writing Against Oblivion: Personal Filmmaking from the Forsaken Generation in Post-Socialist China, is on contemporary Chinese independent cinema and its relationship with (post-)socialist historical memory. She has published on Chinese cinema, documentary, and Japanese animation in journals such as Asian Cinema, International Journal of Comic Art, and Positions. She also helps curate the REEL CHINA Documentary Biennial. Yiman Wang is Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. She has completed a book manuscript on cross-Pacific film remakes. Her work on film remakes and adaptation, border-crossing stars, Chinese cinema, and DV documentaries has appeared in Camera Obscura, Film Quarterly, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Film and Video, Literature/Film Quarterly, Positions, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, as well as in volumes such as Chinese Films in Focus (2003), Idols of Modernity (2010), Cinema at the City’s Edge (2010), and The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement (2010). James Wicks received his PhD in cultural studies from the University of California, San Diego, USA and is Assistant Professor at Point Loma Nazarenes University in San Diego. His dissertation is entitled “The Antecedents of Taiwan New Cinema: The State of Taiwan Film in the 1960s and 1970s.” He has published articles and book reviews in academic journals such as China Quarterly, Film Art (Beijing), Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Chen Xihe received his MA from the Arts Academy of China and his PhD from Ohio State University, USA. He served as a fellow and deputy director at the Research Department of China Film Research Center (Beijing) in the 1980s and now is a professor in the Film and TV School at Shanghai University, China. His numerous publications include “Industry and Aesthetics of Contemporary Cinema in Mainland China: 1978–2008” (2008) and Film and TV in Cross-Cultural Context (2002). Gary G. Xu is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA, where he teaches Chinese literature, comparative literature, and cinema studies. He is the author of Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (2007) and numerous articles and book chapters on Chinese cinema. Sabrina Qiong Yu teaches Chinese cinema and media at Newcastle University, UK. She received her PhD in film studies from the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include stardom, gender and sexuality, audience/reception studies, transnational Chinese cinema, and Chinese independent documentary films, and her recent articles have appeared in critical volumes such as Chinese Film Stars (2010) and Global Chinese Cinema (2010). She helped launch a series on star studies with Peking University Press in 2010 and translated Leon Hunt’s Kung Fu Cult Masters (2003). Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese Studies, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Studies at the University of California, San Diego, USA and Visiting Chair Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, China. He is the author of The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (1996), Screening China (2002), Chinese National Cinema (2004), and Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010); co-author of Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (1998); editor of China in a Polycentric World (1998) and Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943 (1999); and co-editor of From Underground to Independent (2006) and Chinese Film Stars (2010). Additionally, he has published six Chinese books and over 130 articles in Chinese, English, German, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Zhang Zhen is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University, USA. She is the author of An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (2005) and the editor of The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (2007). Her articles have appeared in numerous journals and critical anthologies. Ying Zhu is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Co-coordinator of the Modern China Program at College of Staten Island, City University of New York, USA. Her articles have appeared in leading media journals and numerous edited volumes. She is the author of Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform (2003) and Television in Post-Reform China (2008) and co-editor of Television Drama: A Chinese and US Perspective (2005, in Chinese), TV Drama in China (2009), and TV China (2009).

1

General Introduction

Yingjin Zhang

At the time when the world had just entered the new millennium, I ventured to track the exciting development of Chinese cinema through its “box-office boom and academic investment” (Y. Zhang 2002: 16–18). Ten years down the road, Chinese cinema has continued its extraordinary expansion in all aspects, very much like the red-hot Chinese economy, which became the world’s second largest when China’s GDP (US$1.33 trillion) surpassed Japan’s (US$1.28 trillion) in the second quarter of 2010 (Time 2010). Yet, even before the awe-inspiring ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, masterminded by the world-renowned Chinese film director Zhang Yimou (b. 1950), were televised live to captivated audiences globally (Curtin 2010: 118), a series of impressive achievements in Chinese cinema had already occurred. In terms of box office in the United States, two successful Chinese art films from the early 1990s could barely compare to two Chinese blockbusters a decade later: on the one hand, The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993) was screened in 113 US theaters and grossed US$6.9 million, while Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1993) opened in three theaters only but grossed $5.2 million; on the other hand, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000) was screened in 2,027 theaters and grossed $128.1 million, while Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002) was screened in 2,175 theaters and grossed $53.7 million (Rosen 2010: 47). In terms of box office in China, the 2009 top-grossing domestic film, The Founding of a Republic (Han Sanping, Huang Jianxin, 2009), reached RMB 415 million (or approximately US$6.1 million) (Yin 2010: 6), representing an increase of 9.9 times over that of the record RMB 42 million set by (Feng Xiaogang, 2001) (Y. Zhang 2010c: 135). Indeed, compared with 88 domestic films and RMB 840 million total box office in 2001 (Y. Zhang 2010a: 172), the 2009 statistics – 456 domestic feature productions and RMB 6,206 million total box office (Yin 2010: 5) – indicate a growth of 5.2 times and 7.4 times, respectively, thereby consolidating a decade-long unprecedented boom (for the latest statistics, see Rosen’s tables in Chapter 11). Equally impressive is the academic investment in Chinese film studies, as colleges in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America have quickly expanded course offerings in China-related disciplinary and area studies. The , a refereed periodical devoted exclusively to this growing field, was inaugurated in the United Kingdom in 2007, academic publishers have increased the number of new books in Chinese film studies, and innumerable panels, workshops, symposia, and conferences on Chinese cinema are held around the world every year.