Archive for the ‘CinemaTalk: Conversations on Chinese Cinema Studies’ Category

CinemaTalk: Conversation with Richard Brody, Film Editor of The New Yorker

Monday, December 7th, 2009

dGenerate Films presents CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies. These conversations are presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format. They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others. This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.

Richard Brody (Photo courtesy of <i>The New Yorker</i>)

Richard Brody (Photo courtesy of The New Yorker)

Richard Brody began writing for The New Yorker in 1999, and has contributed articles about the directors François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Samuel Fuller. Since 2005, he has been the movie-listings editor at the magazine; he writes film reviews, a column about DVDs, and a blog about movies, The Front Row. He is the author of the book “Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.”

In this interview, dGenerate Films’ Kevin Lee talks to Richard Brody about his top ten films of the 2000s, in which he lists three Chinese feature films: Jia Zhangke’s The World, Wang Bing’s Fengming: A Chinese Memoir, and Ying Liang’s The Other Half. This conversation touches on all three films, and why Brody considers Chinese cinema to be “the crucial story in cinema of the past decade.” Brody also discusses two other films on his list, Jean-Luc Godard’s In Praise of Love and Claude Lanzmann’s Sobibor, 14 October 1943, 4PM, and their connection to the Chinese films he selected.

Brody’s full top ten list, and a topical index of the podcast with timecode follows after the break.

Play the Podcast (Time: 22:39) (right click to download)

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CinemaTalk: Conversation with David Bandurski, Ghost Town producer

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

dGenerate Films presents CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies. These conversations are presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format. They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others. This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.

David Bandurski (photo courtesy of Bonnie Bandurski)

David Bandurski (photo by Bonnie Bandurski)

An award-winning journalist, David Bandurski is currently a writer and researcher for the China Media Project, a research program of the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. His writings have appeared in Far Eastern Economic Review, the Wall Street Journal, Index on Censorship, the South China Morning Post and other publications. He received a Human Rights Press Award in 2008 for an investigative piece for the Far Eastern Economic Review on China’s use of professional associations to enforce Internet censorship guidelines. David was also co-recipient of a Merit Prize in Commentary in 2007. Mr. Bandurski’s involvement with China’s nascent independent documentary scene began in 2005, as he made contact with several filmmakers while writing about the movement. Realizing the power of digital video technology, Mr. Bandurski decided to turn a planned long-form narrative article about the African community in Guangzhou into a documentary feature. This began a long and fruitful collaboration with Guangzhou-based filmmaker Zhao Dayong.

In this interview, dGenerate Films’ Kevin Lee talks to David Bandurski about his involvement with Ghost Town and director Zhao Dayong, the film’s reception both in China and abroad, and his ongoing work with the China Media Project.

Note: This interview was conducted with David via Skype. There are occasional moments of audio breakup. A full transcript follows after the break.

Play the Podcast (Time: 24:47)

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CinemaTalk: a Conversation with Michael Berry

Monday, August 24th, 2009

dGenerate Films presents CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies. These conversations are presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format. They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others. This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.

Michael Berry (photo courtesy of University of California, Santa Barbara / Michael Berry)Michael Berry is Associate Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He is the author of the BFI Film Classics monograph Jia Zhang-ke’s Hometown Trilogy, which offers extended analysis of the films Xiao Wu, Platform, and Unknown Pleasures; A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film, which explores literary and cinematic representations of atrocity in twentieth century China; and Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers, a collection of dialogues with contemporary Chinese filmmakers including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhang Yimou, Stanley Kwan, and Jia Zhangke.  Also an active literary translator, Berry has translated several important contemporary Chinese novels by Yu Hua, Ye Zhaoyan, Chang Ta-chun, and Wang Anyi.  Current literary translation projects include the modern martial arts novel The Last Swallow of Autumn (Xia Yin) and Wu He’s (Dancing Crane) award-winning novel Remains of Life (Yu Sheng), a fascinating literary exploration of the 1930 Musha Incident, which was honored with a 2008 NEA Translation Grant.

In this conversation with dGenerate’s Kevin Lee, Michael shares his insights on Jia Zhangke, specifically his career development since the “Hometown Trilogy” and his recent controversy at the Melbourne International Film Festival.   Be sure to read Jia’s statement of withdrawal from the Melbourne Film Festival as a point of reference.

Play the Podcast (Time: 17:39)

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Get a list of Michael’s publications and a timecoded index of topics covered in the interview after the jump.

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CinemaTalk: a Conversation with Tami Blumenfield

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

dGenerate Films presents CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies.  These conversations are presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format.  They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others.  This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.

Tami Blumenfield (photo courtesy of University of Washington / Tami Blumenfield)

Tami Blumenfield (photo courtesy of University of Washington / Tami Blumenfield)

Tami Blumenfield is a Lecturer at the University of Washington. Her research mainly focuses on the education and media representation of minorities in southwest China, especially the Moso and Na. Her teaching areas cover movement and media representation in contemporary China, indigenous media, kinship studies, visual anthropology, and anthropology of education. Tami Blumenfield is also one of the organizers of the Moso Media Projects, which comprises the Moso Film Festival, participatory media production, and ethnographies of Moso Media.

In this conversation with dGenerate’s Kevin Lee, Tami shares her engagement and interaction with the Moso community, and articulates the effect of filmmaking process on local people and culture with vivid examples from her own experience. She draws particular attention to the ethics of representation, the significance of collaborative projects, and the role of filmmakers and researchers from an anthropological point of view.

Play the Podcast (Time: 22:04)

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Click through for a list of Tami’s publications and a timecoded index of topics covered in the interview.

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CinemaTalk: A Conversation with Lu Xinyu

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

dGenerate Films presents CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies.  These conversations are presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format.  They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others.  This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.

Lyu

Lu Xinyu (photo courtesy of UCLA International Institute)

Lu Xinyu is Professor and Director of the Radio and TV Department, School of Journalism, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.  Professor Lu is widely regarded as the leading scholar on independent Chinese documentaries.  Her influential book Documenting China: The New Documentary Movement (Beijing, SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2003) was the first book to systematically theorize the New Documentary Movement in China from the beginning of 1990s.  She spent the past academic year as a visiting scholar in the department of cinema studies at New York University.

Selected Publications by Lu Xinyu:

Books:

  • Writing and What It Obscures (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008)
  • Documenting China: The Contemporary Documentary Movement in China (SDX Joint Publishing Company, Beijing, 2003)
  • Mythology. Tragedy. Aristotle’s Art of Poetry: New Concept to Ancient Greek’s Poetics Tradition (Fudan University Press, Shanghai, 1995)

Papers and Articles:

  • “The Power and Pain of Chinese New Documentary Movement”, Dushu No. 5, 2006.
  • “Ruins of the Future Class and History in Wang Bing’s Tiexi District”, New Left Review, 31 Jan/Fab 2005. London.
  • “Tiexi District: History and Class Consciousness”, Dushu No. 1, 2004.
  • “The History of Documentary and the Document of the History”, Journalism Quarterly, Winter, 2003.
  • “A Memorandum about Contemporary Chinese Documentary Development”, South China Television Journal No. 6, 2002 and No. 1, 2003.
  • “Began from the Other Side: New Documentary Movement in China”, Frontiers No. 3, 2002.

In this interview conducted by dGenerate’s Yuqian Yan, Lu Xinyu told us about her current work during her visit in New York and how she was attracted to independent Chinese documentary from an aesthetic and humanist background.  Starting from Aristotle’s poetic concept of “tragedy”, she led us to understand the New Documentary Movement as a unique art form that depicts the tragic life of ordinary people in the rapidly changing Chinese society.  The interview was conducted in Chinese.  Full English transcript after the break.

Play the Podcast (in Mandarin Chinese) (Time: 16:43)

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CinemaTalk: A Conversation with Chris Berry

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Chris Berry

dGenerate Films is pleased to introduce CinemaTalk, an ongoing series of conversations with esteemed scholars of Chinese cinema studies.  These conversations will be presented on this site in audio podcast and/or text format.  They are intended to help the Chinese cinema studies community keep abreast of the latest work being done in the field, as well as to learn what recent Chinese films are catching the attention of others.  This series reflects our mission to bring valuable resources and foster community around the field of Chinese film studies.

For our first CinemaTalk, we spoke with Chris Berry, Professor of Film and Television Studies in the Department of Media and Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London.  Some of Chris’ work includes:

  • Author, Cinema and the National: China on Screen (Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006) with Mary Farquhar
  • Author, Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004)
  • Editor (with Ying Zhu), TV China (Indiana University Press, 2008)
  • Editor, Chinese Films in Focus II (British Film Institute, 2008)
  • Editor (with Feii Lu), Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005)
  • Editor (with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue), Mobile Cultures:  New Media and Queer Asia (Durham:  Duke University Press, 2003)
  • Translator and Editor, Ni Zhen’s Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy:  The Origins of China’s Fifth Generation Filmmakers (Duke University Press, 2002)
  • Author, “Imaging the Globalized City: Rem Koolhaas, U-thèque, and the Pearl River Delta,” in Cinema at the City’s Edge, edited by Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming), part of a series TransAsia: Screen Cultures, co-edited by Chris Berry and Koichi Iwabuchi

Kevin Lee, dGenerate’s VP of Programming of Education, spoke with Chris about various topics from his current work and areas of focus, to comparisons between contemporary Chinese cinema and the Fifth Generation filmmakers whom he helped to champion in the 1980s and 1990s, to which recent Chinese films that have excited him the most.  

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Full transcript follows after the break.

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