Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics

by Sheldon H. Lu (Editor)

From China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to Singapore and Hollywood, from martial arts films of the early twentieth century to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon at the turn of the twenty-first century, Chinese-language films have opened new doors to the imaging and construction of national and ethnic identity. This volume, the most comprehensive work to date on Chinese film, explores the manifold dimensions of the subject and highlights areas overlooked in previous studies. In the essays in this collection, leading scholars take up issues and topics covering the entire range of Chinese cinema. Their cross-cultural engagements with individual films, accomplished with an acute sense of chronology and history, tackle questions and issues related to historiography, poetics, aesthetics, genres, and directorial styles; at the same time, they address the economics of film production and consumption as well as the cultural politics of globalization, identity, subjectivity, nationality, citizenship, and gender formation as embodied in filmic texts. They offer insightful, detailed analyses of films by such internationally renowned directors as Zhang Yimou, Hou Hsia-hsien, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-liang, Lin Cheng-sheng, Jiang Wen, Ann Hui, Sylvia Chang, Wu Nianzhen, Eric Koo, and others. Chinese-Language Film makes a significant contribution to international film studies. It will become required reading for all those, whether student, specialist, or general reader, who are interested in Chinese cinema and international film culture or concerned with questions of nationalism, transnationalism, globalization, and multiculturalism.

413 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2004

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are better essays on Chinese 20th century film but it provides great background context to what shaped Shanghai's golden age, and good crash course on Chinese 20th century political movements.