About the Book
What does it mean for a cinematic work to be "Chinese"? Does it refer specifically to a work's subject, or does it also reflect considerations of language, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, or political orientation? Such questions make any single approach to a vast field like "Chinese cinema" difficult at best. Accordingly, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas situates the term more broadly among various different phases, genres, and distinct national configurations, while taking care to address the consequences of grouping together so many disparate histories under a single banner.
Offering both a platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue and a mapping of Chinese cinema as an expanded field, this Handbook presents thirty-three essays by leading researchers and scholars intent on yielding new insights and new analyses using three different methodologies. Chapters in Part I investigate the historical periodizations of the field through changing notions of national and political identity -- all the way from the industry's beginnings in the 1920s up to its current forms in contemporary Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the global diaspora. Chapters in Part II feature studies centered on the field's taxonomical formalities, including such topics as the role of the Chinese opera in technological innovation, the political logic of the "Maoist film," and the psychoanalytic formula of the kung fu action film. Finally, in Part III, focus is given to the structural elements that comprise a work's production, distribution, and reception to reveal the broader cinematic apparatuses within which these works are positioned. Taken together, the multipronged approach supports a wider platform beyond the geopolitical and linguistic limitations in existing scholarship.
Expertly edited to illustrate a representative set of up to date topics and approaches, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas provides a vital addition to a burgeoning field still in its formative stages.
Table of Contents:
HISTORY ; 1) Jianhua Chen, ; "D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai" ; 2) Kristine Harris, ; "Ombres Chinoises: Split-Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty" ; 3) David Der-wei Wang, ; "Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China" ; 4) Jie Li, ; "A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture Association" ; 5) Yomi Braester ; "A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period" ; 6) Poshek Fu ; "Cold War Hong Kong and Mid-twentieth Century Mandarin Cinema" ; 7) Tsungyi Michelle Huang ; "Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema" ; 8) Song Hwee Lim ; "Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power" ; 9) Michael Berry ; "Chinese Cinema with Hollywood Characteristics, or How The Karate Kid became a Chinese Film" ; 10) Pheng Cheah, ; "World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke's Still Life as World Cinema" ; FORM ; 1) Stephen Teo, ; "The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form" ; 2) Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, ; "A Small History of Wenyi" ; 3) Ban Wang, ; "Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema" ; 4) Gary Gang Xu, ; "Edification through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974-76" ; 5) Michael Eng, ; "Reforming Vengeance: Kung Fu and the Racial Melancholia of Chinese Masculinity" ; 6) Sean Metzger ; "Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema" ; 7) Yingjin Zhang, ; "Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Chinese Independent Documentary and Social Theories of Space and Locality" ; 8) Ying Zhu, ; "From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dynasty TV Drama" ; 9) Audrey Yue, ; "New Media: Large Screens in China" ; 10) Paola Voci, ; "Online Small Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emancipated Spectator" ; STRUCTURE ; 1) Jason McGrath ; "Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film" ; 2) James Tweedie, ; "Edward Yang and Taiwan's Age of Auteurs" ; 3) Darrell William Davis, ; "A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Films" ; 4) Zhiwei Xiao ; "Policing Film in Early 20th Century China, 1905-1923" ; 5) Laikwan Pang, ; "Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of People's Republic of China" ; 6) Rey Chow, ; "Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of 'Woman' in Chinese Cinema" ; 7) Louisa Schein, ; "Ethnographic Representation Across Genres: The Culture Trope in Contemporary Mainland Media" ; 6) Andy Rodhekohr, ; "Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral / Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film" ; 9) Kwai-Cheung Lo, ; "The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions" ; 10) Eugene Wang, ; "Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation" ; 11) Ying Qian, ; "Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Re-enactment and the Founding of PRC Documentary Cinema" ; 12) Yiman Wang, ; "Remade in China: Chinese Cinema in the Age of Blockbuster" ; 13) Carlos Rojas, ; "Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-liang's The River"
About the Author :
Carlos Rojas is Associate Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, and Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University. He is the author of The Great Wall: A Cultural History (Harvard UP, 2010).
Eileen Chow is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies at Harvard University. She is the coeditor, with Carlos Rojas, of Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (Routledge, 2009)
Review :
The publication of this book represents an important mile marker in the academic study of Chinese cinema ... it is erudite, sophisticated, and self-reflective ... an outstanding work.
