Sino-Enchantment: The Fantastic in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas(Edinburgh Studies in East Asian Film)

Although Chinese film audiences have always maintained a foundational cultural interest in the fantastic, this trend has dramatically increased over the last decade. Sino-Enchantment is the first work in English to approach this recent explosion of fantastic film in Chinese cinemas, where each re-envisioning of the form is determined by cultural, economic, political and technological factors to produce fresh inventions and creative reinventions of familiar narratives, characters and tropes. With case studies of films such as The Assassin (2015), Monster Hunt (2015) and The Great Wall (2016), this novel approach uses the framework of 'Sino-enchantment' as a new theoretical lens through which readers can engage with elements of the fantastic in Chinese cinema.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Fantastic as Sino-Enchantment in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas, Kenneth Chan and Andrew Stuckey Visuality/Virtuality 1. Heroic Human Pixels: Mass Ornaments and Digital Multitudes in Zhang Yimou’s Spectacles, Jason McGrath 2. The Spectacle of Co-Production in The Great Wall, Dan North 3. The Blockbuster Breakthrough: The Fantastic in Hero, Li Yang Genres of Sino-Enchantment 4. The Restrained Fantastic in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin, Andrew Stuckey 5. An Auteurist Journey through the Fantastic Mode: A Case Study of Ho Meng-hua, Shi-Yan Chao 6. Tracing the Science Fiction Genre in Hong Kong Cinema, Tom Cunliffe 7. Chick Flick Fantasy and Postfeminism in Chinese Cinema: 20 Once Again as a Transnational Remake, Elaine Chung 8. The Sacred Spectacle: Subverting Skepticism in Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee Films, Ian Pettigrew Ethics 9. Almost Wild, But Not Quite: The Indexical and the Fantastic Animal Other in China-Coproduced (Eco)Cinema, Yiman Wang 10. Domesticity, Sentimentality and Otherness: The Boundary of the Human in Monster Hunt, Mei Yang 11. Transforming Tripitaka: Toward a (Buddhist) Planetary Ethics in Stephen Chow’s Adaptation of Journey to the West, Kenneth Chan Coda: Sino-Enchantment in a Time of Crisis, Kenneth Chan and Andrew Stuckey Selected Filmography Bibliography

About the Author :
Kenneth Chan is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Northern Colorado Dr Andrew Stuckey is an independent scholar.

Review :
China’s haunted screens boast a rich legacy of uncanny, bizarre, grotesque, horrific, mystical and paranormal tales dating back to the silent era. Emerging from a period in which the supernatural ran afoul of censors in the Peoples’ Republic of China, the resurgence of films rooted in "superstition" merits serious critical attention. This anthology provides penetrating insight into this re-enchantment seen in films by auteurs such as Zhang Yimou (PRC), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan), and Tsui Hark (Hong Kong) as well as in reimagined classics such as Journey to the West in its multiple manifestations on screen.