Coal Miners in China (Image: China Digital Times)

by Ariella Tai

The Asia Society’s China Green feature “Black Lungs: The Hidden Tolls of Coal Mining” discusses the high environmental and human costs of coal mining in China. Although the ecological risks of coal mining and consumption are widely known, this feature explores the human cost of mining in more depth.

Featured on the site is a clip from Faraway Mountain, independent documentary filmmaker Hu Jie’s film on the living conditions of coal miners in a northern Chinese village. These so-called “cave-cats” spend over 12 hours a day in the mines for the equivalent of less than 600 USD per month, with little to no protection from the fumes and dust. One miner interviewed compares mining to battle, observing that:

“Mining coal is like going to war- three or four deaths a day. But if a fire explosion happens, bam! Suddenly thousands of people and the entire mine is wiped out!”

But more dangerous even than the risk of getting crushed by machinery or buried alive by mine collapses, is the fatal “Black Lung” disease- contracted by breathing fumes of kerosene and coal dust. Although the government does allot funds to cover treatment for those afflicted with Black Lung, patients who are “too far advanced,” too old, or who contracted the disease working in an illegal mine are not eligible for treatment, and even the lung-flushing procedures funded by the government are only able to alleviate symptoms of the disease, rather than cure.

According to official Chinese statistics, “Since 1949 over a quarter million people have died from coal mining”

Visit Asia Society’s China Green feature here.

Related posts

• Free Ticket Giveaway for Asia Society’s China Green Multimedia Festival (0)
• Tsai Ming-Liang Film Series at Asia Society (0)

Kevin Lee (center) with students of Swarthmore College (photo by Shiyin Lin)

Last month dGenerate Films’ Kevin B. Lee gave a presentation and screening to students and faculty at Swarthmore College. Alex Ho, student organizer of the event, provided the following testimonial:

Many thanks for coming to Swarthmore College to speak about the growth in independent Chinese cinema over the past decade and what your company dGenerate Films is doing to help this movement gain greater exposure. Your talk was of great interest to our varied audience, which included film studies and Chinese studies students and faculty as well as the general liberal arts student who attended on a whim.

As an admirer of your work in online film criticism, I was excited to bring to our college your take on what makes this particular moment in film history so groundbreaking and important, given your extensive knowledge of and passion for world cinema. Your talk certainly didn’t disappoint; it was an accessible, sweeping introduction to Chinese cinema and its place in the foreign film market. At the same time, for even those more familiar with Chinese film, your talk was a priceless look into the works of up-and-coming independent filmmakers that most of the film world doesn’t yet seem to have caught on to. You definitely tapped into our school’s affinity for small-scale, relaxed seminars, peppering your talk with interesting anecdotes and seriously considering questions from our audience about the pertinence of the “dGenerate movement” to the general public in the U.S. and China. Thanks also for having an informal dinner with some of our students and letting us pick your brain about a multitude of topics within and outside of Chinese cinema.

Again, it was a pleasure to bring your presentation to Swarthmore. I hope to see your talk reach more and larger college audiences in the future. Certainly, any university interested in covering Chinese film in its curriculum, shouldn’t limit themselves to the well-known Fifth and Sixth Generation, but look also to the less Beijing-centric films that dGenerate Films works to distribute.

Best,

Alex Ho

dGenerate Films organizes presentations and screenings at colleges, museums and other institutions across the country. For more information, please contact info *at* dgeneratefilms *dot* com.

Related posts

• Highlights from dGenerate Presentation at Swarthmore (1)
• dGenerate Screening and Talk Next Tuesday at Swarthmore (0)

dGenerate's Kevin B. Lee discusses Chinese cinema to students at Swarthmore College

On March 30, 2010, dGenerate Films’ Kevin B. Lee gave a talk to students and faculty at Swarthmore College. The presentation, entitled “From the Fifth Generation to the dGeneration,” gave an introduction to  the wave of digital filmmaking currently prevalent in China, and how it emerged as a response to the Fifth and Sixth Generations of Chinese filmmakers. The talk discussed the films within social, historical, cultural and political contexts and introduced several representative films and directors. Lee also touched on issues such as audience responses both at home and abroad, financing and distribution, and censorship.

The talk was followed by a screening of Fujian Blue by Robin Weng. Highlights of the presentation can be viewed in the video below.

dGenerate Films organizes presentations and screenings at colleges, museums and other institutions across the country. For more information, please contact info *at* dgeneratefilms *dot* com.

Related posts

• Testimonial Feedback from Swarthmore College (0)
• dGenerate Screening and Talk Next Tuesday at Swarthmore (0)

“Images that Cannot be Banned” will offer a program of both fictional and documentary feature films as a way of introducing and exploring an interest in Chinese underground cinema. Through contextualisation, the primary intention of the selection is not to produce a ‘canonical’ list, but rather, to construct a snapshot of underground and independent filmmaking by tracing a web of links and commonalities inherent within emerging trends in Chinese filmmaking over the past decade.

What I like about this statement is the desire to resist producing a canon or list of key films. While there are several films that would be worthy of such a distinction, the Chinese underground cinema movement is a relatively new phenomenon still in the process of maturing and defining its historical legacy. It should be acknowledged that dGenerate took a significant step in commemorating the achievements of the movement with our poll of the greatest Chinese films of the 2000s, in which numerous digital independent productions were cited. But at the same time, there is such a wealth of creative activity being generated by the Chinese underground scene, that singling out specific films risks misrepresenting the collective nature of the movement, as a response to a larger and multifaceted sense of crisis underlying the radical social development of China in the post-Reform era.

It’s encouraging to see that a number of articles found on the dGenerate site are linked by Carrington as key resources for learning about Chinese underground cinema, as well as our short documentary Digital Underground in the People’s Republic, which, we hope, gives an impression of how much this aesthetic movement is the result of a collective effort involving not just directors, but producers, programmers and audiences.

Related posts

• CinemaTalk: a Conversation with Tami Blumenfield (0)
• Zhang Yimou Releases New Film to “Battle” with Hollywood (2)

We had a great time at last year’s Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, so we’re coming to the2010 Meeting in Philadelphia. Look for our booth in the Exhibitions Hall, where you can meet dGenerate staff, buy our DVDs (including some of our new releases) and enter our raffle for a free dGenerate DVD! Also, four of our films will be shown in the media screening area of the conference. Our booth will be open from Friday, March 26 to Sunday, March 28. See you there!

Related posts

• A Myriad of Lights: Report from the AAS Annual Meeting (1)

Rocky Mountain MLA Conference
Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 14-16, 2010

As in the past, this year’s annual convention of the Rocky Mountain MLA
boasts several panels related to Chinese and Asian literature and film.
Howard Goldblatt will be this year’s keynote speaker. The deadline for all
proposals is March 31, 2010. A complete list of panels and all relevant information can be found at:

http://rmmla.wsu.edu/default.asp

—————————————————————————–

CALL FOR PAPERS

Chinese Cinema in the US since 1979
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. USA
October 8-10, 2010

Submission Deadline – April 30, 2010

Sponsored by the Chinese Film Collection, a division of the Moving Image
Research Collections at USC; in collaboration with Film and Media Studies at
USC, ChinaFilm at Harvard, the Chinese National Film Archive, Beijing Film
Academy, and the Chinese Film Market journal; and supported by the Confucius
Institute Headquarters; the conference “Chinese Cinema in the US since 1979″
will be held in Columbia, SC, Oct 8-10, 2010. The conference will focus on
Chinese films made after 1979, when China and the US normalized diplomatic
relations. The discussions with be divided into two independent yet
interrelated categories:

(I) How have Chinese films, as instruments of cultural diplomacy and
occasions for cultural dialogue and exchange, been perceived by American
students, artists, critics, scholars, and politicians? How has the
accessibility (or lack thereof) of Chinese films shaped the perceptions
about them?

(II) How have Chinese films been utilized in learning the Chinese language
in the past and how should they be used in the future?

For the discussions of the first category, we welcome proposals from all
disciplines, professions, and perspectives that address issues in ethnic,
artistic, political, social, philosophical, and historical
understanding/misunderstanding of Chinese films.

For discussions of the second category, we seek expertise particularly in
converting the films into a learning tool for the Chinese language, which
has become popular in the United States.

It is likely a Chinese delegation of scholars and filmmakers will join the
conference. During the conference we will also president a Week of Jia
Zhangke’s Films.

Abstracts of the papers should be between 100 and 150 words in length and
should be submitted electronically to both and < clean.ann@gmail.com> by April 30, 2010.

Should you have any questions, please send them to the above email addresses
or call Grace Lee  at (803)777-4758 or (803) 319-0703

The acceptance of the paper will be announced by May 30, 2010.

—————————————————————————–

Announcement and Call for Papers
2010 Melbourne Conference on China: Chinese Elites and their Rivals – Past, Present and Future

Date: Monday, 19 July and Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Venue: The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Organiser: Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts, the University of Melbourne
Print: The Programme (To be available after 1 June 2010)

Following the success of the 2009 Melbourne Conference on China, The Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne is pleased to announce the 2010 Melbourne Conference on China, to be held at the University of Melbourne on Monday, 19 July 2010 and Tuesday, 20 July 2010.

We welcome researchers, specialists, policy makers, policy advisers and educators working in anywhere in the world and in any area of China studies to come to the southern hemisphere to meet in Melbourne, the acknowledged capital of culture in Australia, to explore the various questions posed by the ongoing and rapid changes that have affected Chinese elite groups and their rivals in the past, the present and, most importantly, in the future.

Elites – and rivals to them – are found in all complex human societies. The struggle between elites and their rivals is one of the most powerful forces shaping human social and cultural systems. China’s traditional elites were among the first in the world to be selected on the basis of educational attainment, and the collapse of the old Chinese elite structure in the modern era had profound implications for almost every aspect of Chinese life, from politics to economics to culture to language. The emergence of a new Chinese elite system in the course of the twentieth century constitutes one of the most complex processes in the recent history of humankind. Analysis of the various kinds of elites in China (political, military, economic, technological, cultural, ethnic, social, educational, linguistic and even environmental) – and of their rivals – provides a powerful tool for understanding that country’s past and present, as well as the likely direction of its future development.

The issues that will be discussed in the conference Chinese Elites and their Rivals – Past, Present, and Future include, but are not limited to, the following:

· What is the current state of scholarly understanding of China’s elites and their rivals, and what new theoretical and empirical perspectives on these questions have emerged in recent years?

· How are China’s current elites, including political, economic, technical, military, ethnic, social, educational and cultural elites, connected to the twentieth century processes of nation-building and revolution?

· What are the likely future developments in China’s elite groups, and what new challenges will those elites face in the coming decades? Specifically, which elites will take the lead in China’s future development, and how will this occur?

· Are there long-term continuities and common and persistent characteristics in China’s elite cultures, in particular, continuities spanning the imperial era, modern times and the present?

· How is the power of different types of elites contested? Are there any unique features in the contests between different types of elites that have hitherto been ignored or misunderstood? How do the various types of elite groups in China – past and present – relate to each other?

· What is the status of the new, and still emerging, urban classes? In what ways are they culturally, economically, socially and politically significant? What is the role of China’s new rich?

· What is the role of the descendants of the members of privileged social groups? Will the emergence of private ownership in China produce a ‘silver-spoon’ elite, with elite status becoming inheritable?

· What has been the role of overseas Chinese elites in China’s modernisation? How should the role of foreign-trained returnees, both old and new, be defined?

· What is the status of ethnic minority elites in Han-dominated China? Who are these minority elites? How are they affected by the larger economic, linguistic, political and cultural institutions that shape Chinese life?

· What is the impact of the Internet on the rivalry between the elites and the masses? How, and to what extent, is the power of elites contested in the virtual world?

· Are educational elites, both foreign-trained and China-trained, still highly regarded in China? What changes have taken place in Chinese systems of cultural/intellectual capital? How have these been affected by engagement with systems from outside, for example in the learning of foreign languages?

· What connections, similarities and differences are there between China’s elites, ancient and modern, and elites in other parts of the world?

(Papers examining any other aspect of this broad theme, from any other perspective that is not mentioned above, are also welcome.)

Leading scholars and policy advisers from Australia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States have been invited to address the conference.

Papers on any aspect of Chinese elites and their rivals and any related thematic issue or historical period are welcomed. Each presentation will be for 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.

The conference will be conducted in English, but a few sessions will be bilingual and conducted in both English and Chinese.

All sessions will be held on the University of Melbourne campus on Monday, 19 July 2010, and Tuesday, 20 July 2010.

Those attending the conference will be responsible for organising their own travel and accommodation, and some meals. The Conference Organising Committee will soon post more information about hotels located within a 15 minute walking distance from the University of Melbourne.

Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words, no later than Friday, 30 April 2010, to the following email address: Conference-on-China@unimelb.edu.au

The abstract must be in English and must contain the proposed title of the paper, the author’s name and home institution, a brief bio of no more than 150 words, along with contact details, including postal address in English, or Chinese (if applicable). All submissions will be acknowledged in writing upon receipt via email. Other inquiries may also be sent to the above email address, or to the contact people listed below.

Deadlines: Submission of abstracts: Friday, 30 April 2010
Notification of acceptance: Friday, 14 May 2010
The conference programme: Friday, 28 May 2010
Standard registration: Friday, 18 June 2010

Registration: All attendees should either register online after receiving both postal and email acceptance notifications, or send a completed registration form to the Conference Organising Committee by email to contact persons.

A standard conference fee of AU$100 is payable upon register. Postgraduate students are entitled to a discount of 50% on their registration fee.

More information about the registration form and fee, as well as hotels located within walking distance of the University of Melbourne, will be available in February 2010 on the official Asia Institute website at: http://www.chinastudies.unimelb.edu.au/conferences/2010/index.php

Contacts: Please contact the Conference Organising Committee, Asia Institute, the University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, or email Conference-on-China@unimelb.edu.au

If you have other questions about this conference, please feel free to email Dr Gao Jia at jia@unimelb.edu.au and Dr Lewis Mayo at lmayo@unimelb.edu.au

Website: Information on this particular conference may be found on various websites, but the Asia Institute website can be taken as the most up-to-date source: http://www.chinastudies.unimelb.edu.au/conferences/2010/index.php

Related posts

• Statement by Jia Zhangke on his withdrawal from Melbourne International Film Festival (2)
• Online Project on Chinese Underground Cinema and Piracy (0)

Zhang Xianmin (photo courtesy China Independent Film Festival)

One of our key partners in China is Zhang Xianmin, who is a leading figure of the independent film scene.  Film producer, writer, programmer: these are just a few of his credentials. And now, Zhang will be contributing a series of articles for our website, offering his own perspective on Chinese indie cinema.

To kick things off, here are his thoughts on six recent Chinese independent documentaries, offering his own insights into the background on the films and filmmakers. A couple titles happen to be dGenerate titles.

————-

Using directed by Zhou Hao.
Zhou Hao always cross-produces several projects at the same time. When this documentary was made, he was also working on other subjects, such as the cotton industry and Olympic youths. The central character is known as Brother Long by other social outcasts. Originally from Northeast China, he makes his living by dealing drugs in Guangzhou, and eventually he is trapped in drug addiction himself. He helps others, but also requests help from others all the time, especially from the filmmaker Zhou Hao. But what Zhou Hao offers cannot save him. The story is astonishing and thrilling.

Survival Song directed by Yu Guangyi
Yu Guangyi used to be a painter for several decades. But his documentary-making is close to writing: a personal work, made step by step with integrated narrative and vivid characters. It is not until recently that Mr. Yu switched to digital filmmaking. His daughter helped him edit his first film Last Lumberjacks before she went to university. His works are deep and solid.

Empty City directed by Ji Dan
Ji Dan is not an ethnic Han Chinese. She lived in Beijing for almost ten years and developed a close relationship with Feng Yan, Li Ying and Fujioka Asako. After she returned to China, she became good friends with Sha Qing and other documentary makers and made several documentaries about marginalized people in China, such as the Japanese who stayed in China after the Second World War, old people, Tibetans. Her works includes long-term documenting, as well as chance encounters. This film is based on her long-term observation on different people in a nursing center for the elderly and the film focuses on one single character she selected among them.

Utopia directed by Wang Yiren
Wang Yiren is a newspaper journalist. He writes social news, as well as prose. This documentary is based on the phenomenon in mainland China that “special” patients are separated from others in the medical system. In the south and northwest, it mainly concerns people who were infected with smallpox thirty or forty years ago; whereas in Wang Yiren’s hometown, disabled people, (especially those with mental disabilities) are kept in a desolate area in the countryside. But this work is not about suffering; on the contrary, these people formed a community where they complement and help each other in the past years. There’s no other word but utopia that can describe this weird, warm, small community that lacks a future. This film reflects the grotesque trend beyond realism in that has emerged in Chinese documentaries over the past two or three years.

Bing Ai directed by Feng Yan
Feng Yan spent years following a peasant woman, Bing Ai, who refused to give up her own land in the Three Gorges area. Feng Yan was greatly moved by her uncompromising personality. Feng says, most Chinese people give up their own land too easily. It’s too futile. Meanwhile, the ongoing effort Feng Yan put in this documentary is comparable to Bing Ai’s persistence of the land. In this sense, the filmmaker and her subject are unified in this documentary: Bing Ai is a counterpart of Feng Yan; Feng Yan is a reflection of Bing Ai.

Crime and Punishment directed by Zhao Liang
Zhao Liang documents the routine work of a small police station in Northeast China (on the border between China and North Korea). He is a local there, but has lived in Beijing as a conceptual and visual artist for many years. The everyday scenes of work and violence themselves do not provoke spiritual thoughts, as the title indicates. But the omission and extension of certain narratives, the philosophical discussion of different possibilities in human relation are all important issues that face contemporary documentary making.

The forms of these six documentaries are all different from each other. Besides their fundamental realism, some of them question the practical function of documentary; some establish a new relationship between the filmmaker and the subject; some make the most realistic everyday life appear absurd and abstract through skillful editing. They honestly represent the diverse reality in contemporary China, and they are also the pioneers of documentary innovation.

Related posts

• Films on Crime in China Now Available: Crime and Punishment and Using (0)
• Zhao Liang’s Petition screening at Migrating Forms Festival (1)

The essay certainly speaks on behalf of the types of films that we at dGenerate Films cherish, and it accounts for some of the reasons we find these films so valuable to audiences around the world. Both Jia and several of these films will appear at the Asia Society through March and April.

Full essay after the break.

The Age of Amateur Cinema Will Return

(Yeyu dianying shidai jijiang zaici daolai)

Published in One Person’s Impression: Complete Guidebook to DV (Yigeren de yingxiang: DV wanquan shouce), eds. by Zhang, Xianmin and Zhang, Yaxuan, Beijing: China Youth Publishing, 2003

In a restaurant far away from downtown Pusan, Tony Rayns discussed with me some issues on films on behalf of the British magazine Sight & Sound.

For some reason, conversations about films always get people trapped into sentimental feelings. In order to get out of this mood, Tony brought up a new topic and asked me, “What do you think will become the driving force for the development of films in the future?” Without hesitation, I replied, “The age of amateur cinema will return.” This was the most truthful and vivid feeling I had, and I had been continually reinforcing my opinion every time I was asked about the prospects of films.

It certainly challenges the so-called professional filmmakers. Those who strictly follow professional principles and exhaustively describe the marketing ability they possess have long lost their power of thought. They pay too much attention to whether the film is good enough to reflect their professional competencies. For example, the picture should be as delicate as an oil painting, or the mise-en-scene is supposed to match that of Antonioni’s films; even the twinkling spotlight needs to be right on the face of the actor. They repeatedly fathom the professional mindset, cautioning themselves against any amateur act that breaks the established classical rules. Conscience and sincerity, which are crucial to filmmaking, are completely diluted by these facts.

What is left? Rigid concepts and preexisting prejudice. These people are indifferent to innovations; they are not even able to make a judgment. Ironically, they always tell other people: don’t repeat yourself. You need variation.

In fact, some directors have already been vigilant against this situation. Japanese director Oguri K?hei once expressed his worries that, though in the past ten years film production in Asia has improved to almost the same level as world-class standards, the artistic spirit of films has largely declined. During the selection process of the Hong Kong International Film Festival that took place earlier, Huang Ailing said, “What hides behind the myth of high-cost production is the loss of cultural faith.”

Turning on the TV in Korea, what I saw was the same satellite TV channels as those I got in Beijing. I was disappointed. In a few years, young people throughout Asia will probably sing the same song, be attracted to the same clothes; girls will wear the same makeup and carry the same handbag. What kind of world is this turning into? It is precisely in this cultural environment that only independent films that remain committed to the depiction of local culture can provide some cultural diversity. I feel more and more strongly that people can only achieve emotional communication and equal position through diversity. The trend of globalization will make this world become tedious.

Therefore, I say, the age of amateur cinema will return.

This is a group of real film enthusiasts who have unquenchable passion for film.

They naturally exceed the existing professional evaluation method because they are open to more promising film forms.

Their film modes are always unexpected, but the emotion and sentiments they invest in their films are always precise and palpable.

They ignore the so-called professional methods, so they have more chance to be innovative. They refuse to follow the standardized principles, so they acquire more diverse ideas and values. They free themselves from conventional customs and restraints to an infinite space for creation; at the same time, they are earnest and responsible because they persist with the conscience and conduct of intellectuals.

Translation by Yuqian Yan

Related posts

• Statement by Jia Zhangke on his withdrawal from Melbourne International Film Festival (2)
• Shelly’s Top Ten Mainland Chinese films of the 2000s (1)

The following two titles are released and available:

Children of Marx and Coca-Cola: Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema

by Xiaoping Lin

Children of Marx and Coca-Cola affords a deep study of Chinese avant-garde art and independent cinema from the mid-1990s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Informed by the author’s experience in Beijing and New York—global cities with extensive access to an emergent transnational Chinese visual culture—this work situates selected artworks and films in the context of Chinese nationalism and post-socialism and against the background of the capitalist globalization that has so radically affected contemporary China. It juxtaposes and compares artists and independent filmmakers from a number of intertwined perspectives, particularly in their shared avant-garde postures and perceptions.
Xiaoping Lin provides illuminating close readings of a variety of visual texts and artistic practices, including installation, performance, painting, photography, video, and film. Throughout he sustains a theoretical discussion of representative artworks and films and succeeds in delineating a variegated postsocialist cultural landscape saturated by market forces, confused values, and lost faith. This refreshing approach is due to Lin’s ability to tackle both Chinese art and cinema rigorously within a shared discursive space. He, for example, aptly conceptualizes a central thematic concern in both genres as “postsocialist trauma” aggravated by capitalist globalization. By thus focusing exclusively on the two parallel and often intersecting movements or phenomena in the visual arts, his work brings about a fruitful dialogue between the narrow field of traditional art history and visual studies more generally.

Children of Marx and Coca-Cola will be a major contribution to China studies, art history, film studies, and cultural studies. Multiple audiences—specialists, teachers, and students in these disciplines, as well as general readers with an interest in contemporary Chinese society and culture—will find that this work fulfills an urgent need for sophisticated analysis of China’s cultural production as it assumes a key role in capitalist globalization.

30 illus.

Xiaoping Lin is associate professor in the Department of Art, Queens College, the City University of New York.

Read the introduction (PDF) or view the table of contents

Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China

by Yingjin Zhang

In this milestone work, prominent China film scholar Yingjin Zhang proposes “polylocality” as a new conceptual framework for investigating the shifting spaces of contemporary Chinese cinema in the age of globalization. Questioning the national cinema paradigm, Zhang calls for comparative studies of underdeveloped areas beyond the imperative of transnationalism.

The book begins by addressing theories and practices related to space, place, and polylocality in contemporary China before focusing on the space of scholarship and urging scholars to move beyond the current paradigm and explore transnational and comparative film studies. This is followed by a chapter that concentrates on the space of production and surveys the changing landscape of postsocialist filmmaking and the transformation of China’s urban generation of directors. Next is an examination of the space of polylocality and the cinematic mappings of Beijing and a persistent “reel” contact with polylocality in hinterland China. In the fifth chapter Zhang explores the space of subjectivity in independent film and video and contextualizes experiments by young directors with various documentary styles. Chapter 6 calls attention to the space of performance and addresses issues of media and mediation by way of two kinds of playing: the first with documentary as troubling information, the second with piracy as creative intervention. The concluding chapter offers an overview of Chinese cinema in the new century and provides production and reception statistics.

Combining inspired critical insights, original observations, and new information, Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China is a significant work on current Chinese film and a must-read for film scholars and anyone seriously interested in cinema more generally or contemporary Chinese culture.

34 illus.

Yingjin Zhang is director of the Chinese Studies Program and professor of Chinese comparative literature, and cultural studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of seven academic books in English.

Read the introduction (PDF) or view the table of contents

Related posts

• Zhang Yimou Releases New Film to “Battle” with Hollywood (2)
• Tiananmen Square in Film (0)

Proposing “ecocinema” as a new critical framework, the fourteen essays in the volume collectively investigate a wide range of urgent topics in today’s world: Chinese and Western epistemes of nature and humanity; the dialect of socialist modernization amid capitalist globalization; shifting configurations of space, locale, cityscape, and natural landscape; gender, religion, and ethnic cultures; as well as bioethics and environmental politics. The individual chapters zero in on diverse Chinese-language films by talented directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Jia Zhangke, Lou Ye, Fruit Chan, Wu Tianming, Tsai Mingliang, Li Yang, Feng Xiaogang, Zhang Yang, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wang Bing, Ning Hao, Zhang Ming, Dai Sijie, Wanma Caidan, and Huo Jianqi. The book is a timely engagement with Chinese cinema’s ecological consciousness in a historic moment of unparalleled environmental crises and destruction.

The contents of the book can be found on the website of Hong Kong University Press.

Related posts

• New Book Series on Chinese Cinema (0)
• Free Ticket Giveaway for Asia Society’s China Green Multimedia Festival (0)