One Hundred Years of Chinese Cinema
A Generational Dialogue
Edited by Haili Kong and John A. Lent
December 2005 | 298 pages
$24.99 (paperback) | ISBN
978-1-910736-63-0
$44.99 (hardback) | ISBN
978-1-910736-64-7
Arguably the first book to take a generational approach to the Chinese cinema, this book offers a broad picture of the evolution of Chinese cinema in its historical context, as well as thorough and insightful analyses of representative films from different generations.
About the Editors
Haili Kong is Associate Professor of Chinese at Swarthmore College. He was the primary organizer of the Chinese Film Festival and the International Symposium on Chinese Film held at Swarthmore College in 2000.
John Lent edits the journal Asian Cinema and chairs both the Asian Cinema Studies Society and the Asian Popular Culture Group of the Popular Culture Society. He has authored over 60 books and co-organized the International Symposium on Chinese Film held at Swarthmore College in 2000.
Contents
CINEMATIC STYLE AND SPACE IN THE 1930S AND 1940S
- Peter Rist: Visual Style in the Silent Films Made by the Lianhua Film Company [United Photoplay Service] in Shanghai: 1931-35
- Shuang Shen: Representing History and the Nation from Afar: The Case of Qing Gong Mi Shi [A Hidden History of the Qing Court].
HISTORICIZED CINEMATIC TEXTS: THE RECONFIGURED PAST AND PRESENT.
- Xiaobing Tang: Rural Women and Social Change in New China Cinema: From Li Shuanguang to Ermo.
- Rebecca Karl: The Burdens of History: Lin Zexu (1959) and The Opium War (1997).
- Zhiwei Xiao and Hong Yin: The Revisionist History in Recent Chinese Films: A Case Study of My 1919.
ZHANG YIMOU’S CHANGING LENS IN THE 1980s AND THE 1990s.
- Haili Kong: Symbolism through Zhang Yimou’s Subversive Lens in His Early Films.
- Xudong Zhang: Cinema of Postsocialism: Zhang Yimou’s Film Production in the Late 1990s.
THE SIXTH GENERATION FILMMAKERS AND BEYOND
- Weijie Song: Transgression, Submission, and the Fantasy of Youth Subculture: The Nostalgic Symptoms of In the Heat of the Sun.
- Shaoyi Sun: In Search of the Erased Half: Suzhou River, Lunar Eclipse, and the Sixth Generation Filmmakers of China.
- Yingjin Zhang: The Global City of the Transnational Imaginary: Disappearance and Reinscription in Chinese Urban Cinema.
INTERVIEWS
- Teach for a While, Direct for a While: An Interview with China’s Xie Fei, conducted by John A. Lent.
- The Past, the Present, and the Future: An Interview with Wu Ziniu, conducted by Haili Kong
- “All Artists Are Narcissistic”: An Interview with Lou Ye, conducted by Shaoyi Sun.
Praise
“This impressively edited collection of excellent essays on Chinese cinema offers a wide range of research coverage, from the cinematographic style of silent film in the early 1930s to the sixth generation products and the theoretical dilemma in the age of globalization. It represents the cutting edge of research on the fascinating issues of cinematic generational distinctions, global capitalism, cultural politics, and nationhood, and is sure to have a major impact on the study of Chinese cinema.”
—Jianmei Liu, University of Maryland
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