The Program in Film and Media Studies seeks to make a tenure-track faculty
appointment at the rank of assistant professor in Film Studies with a
research specialization in Chinese-language film. This position will begin
in fall 2012.  Teaching load is two courses per semester.  The appointment
will be in FMS but teaching duties will also involve courses crosslisted
between FMS and the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures. The
candidate should demonstrate a high level of fluency in Chinese and be
able to situate Chinese-language cinema (whether from the PRC, Taiwan, or
Hong Kong) within a global context.  Ability to address other Asian
cinemas and media (Japan, Korea, and/or South Asia) would be welcome.
Applicants should have a broad and deep knowledge of film.  In addition to
teaching courses focused on Chinese-language film, the faculty member will
be expected to teach courses that may include: history of world cinema,
film theory, transnational issues in film, major directors, film genres,
or film/digital production.  We encourage applications from candidates
with an interest in the intersection between film production/practice and
theory.

A PhD in film studies or a closely related field completed by the start of
the position is required. Outstanding potential for scholarly publication
and teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels is expected.
Additional duties include: student advising, participation in faculty
governance including program committees, college and university service.

A completed application will consist of a letter of interest, curriculum
vitae, a writing sample, and evidence of teaching excellence such as
syllabi and student evaluations. To apply please visit our website at
https://jobs.wustl.edu <https://jobs.wustl.edu/> and apply to job posting
number 22435.  In addition, three letters of reference should be sent to:
Prof. Gaylyn Studlar, Chair, Chinese-language Film Search Committee,
Washington University in St. Louis, 1 Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1174,
Saint Louis, MO 63130.  Applications will be accepted until the position
is filled, but priority will be given to those received by October 15,
2011.

Email inquires to fms@artsci.wustl.edu or call (314) 935-4056.

Washington University in St. Louis is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative
Action employer, and encourages women, minorities, and persons with
disabilities to apply. Employment eligibility is required upon appointment.

The Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) of the Chinese University of Hong
Kong invites applications for its M.Phil. and Ph.D. programmes in Chinese
Studies for 2012-2013. We welcome strong applicants with specialized
research plans in a variety of disciplines, especially in Chinese
Religion, Twentieth Century History, Literature or Film Studies.

The CEAS provides a platform for interdisciplinary studies of China

conducted in English at the Chinese University.  In addition to the M.
Phil. and Ph. D. programmes, the CEAS also hosts B.A. and M.A. programmes
in Chinese Studies.

Successful applicants will be supported by a monthly studentship of
approximately U.S.$1,200 after tuition. Funding for research activities is
also available.

Closing date for applications for 2012-13 is 31 January 2012. Applicants
are highly encouraged to submit the applications by the fellowship*
deadline on 1 December 2011.

For more information on the application process to the Chinese University
of Hong Kong, visit http://www2.cuhk.edu.hk/gss

For more information on specific requirements for the Centre for East
Asian Studies, visit:

http://www5.cuhk.edu.hk/cea/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=40
&Itemid=76

and

http://www5.cuhk.edu.hk/cea/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=32
&Itemid=61.

Admission Advisor: Prof. Jan Kiely, Director of Research Postgraduate
Programmes
jkiely@cuhk.edu.hk

For enquiries regarding the application procedures, please contact:
Address: Centre for East Asian Studies,
Room 704, Hui Yeung Shing Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Shatin, NT, Hong Kong
Tel: 3943-1088
Fax: 2994-3105
Website: www.cuhk.edu.hk/cea <http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/cea>
Email: estheryip@cuhk.edu.hk

* Applicants for the Ph.D. programme should also take advantage of the
Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme of 2012-13.  Launched by the Research
Grants Council of Hong Kong, the Fellowship supports outstanding students
from other places in the world to come to Hong Kong to pursue Ph.D.
studies.   The Fellowship will provide an annual stipend of approximately
US$30,000 and a conference and research-related travel allowance of
approximately US $1,300 per year.  Please note the application deadline
for the Hong Kong Fellowship Scheme is December 1, 2011.  For details,
visithttp://www2.cuhk.edu.hk/gss/hkphd/

Relevant Classroom Use

The Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University
announces a search to make a tenure-track appointment as assistant professor
in the field of Chinese literature, to begin July 1, 2012. The appointee
will teach undergraduate and graduate courses; the field and period of
specialization are open, but we have particular interest in scholars working
in the following fields: early China, fiction, theater, or modern literature
and/or film. Candidates should have completed a Ph.D. by the time of
appointment. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, a sample chapter
or scholarly paper (30 pp. maximum) and three letters of recommendation to
Chinese Literature Search, EALL, Yale University, Box 208236, New Haven, CT
06520-8236, fax (203) 432-6729. The review of applications will begin
December 1, 2011.

Yale University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Yale
values diversity among its students, staff, and faculty and strongly
welcomes applications from women and underrepresented minorities.

———-

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at University of California at Davis invites applications for a tenure-track position in
Chinese literature of the Ming-Qing era (1368-1911) at the rank of Assistant
Professor. Preference will be given to scholars of the Ming-Qing period, but
outstanding candidates of other pre-modern periods will also be considered.
The successful candidate should have native or near-native proficiency in
Chinese and English, and a strong commitment to excellence in research,
teaching, and service. Applicant must have Ph.D. in hand by the first day of
class. The successful candidate will teach courses in Chinese literature in
translation and in Chinese, and work productively with colleagues in
Japanese, Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, History, etc.
Desirable qualifications include: ability to teach a variety of courses on
traditional literature and classical Chinese language; ability to contribute
to the planning of a new Ph.D. Program in Chinese and World Literatures, and
interest in working productively with interdisciplinary and
interdepartmental programs in the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural
Studies. Screening to begin November 10, 2011. Position open until filled.
Please submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, a short writing
sample, teaching evaluations (if available), and three confidential
references (including their email addresses) at
https://secure.caes.ucdavis.edu/Recruitment/
The University of California, Davis, is an affirmative action/equal
opportunity employer with a strong institutional commitment to the
achievement of diversity among its faculty and staff.

For questions, please e-mail Xiaomei Chen at xmchen@ucdavis.edu

———-

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Chinese Language and Literature
Assistant Professor

The Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
(http://www.cas.sc.edu/dllc/ ) at the University of South Carolina
announces a tenure-track assistant professor position in the field of
Chinese Language and Literature. Primary fields of expertise may be in
Chinese literature before 1949, applied Chinese linguistics, or Chinese
pedagogy; secondary field open but could include Japanese, Russian, or
history of the Chinese Language. Experience teaching Chinese language is a
must. Teaching responsibilities include two courses per semester, with the
possibility of teaching in our nationally-ranked Comparative Literature
programs. Applicants with expertise in both literature and
linguistics/pedagogy will be given special consideration. A Ph.D. in
Chinese or Comparative Literature is required, in hand, by August 2012.
Applicants should submit a letter of application, current CV, and three
letters of recommendation to:

Recruitment Coordinator
Chinese Language & Literature
USC Dept. of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
1620 College St. RM 917
Columbia, SC 29208

For full consideration by the search committee, applications should be
received no later than November 1, 2011. The Department of Languages,
Literatures, and Cultures is proud to be home to the tenth ranked public
PhD in Comparative Literature in the nation (NRC 2010) and to a new PhD in
Spanish. We are also home to internationally known scholars in language
acquisition, children’s literature, Chinese, Classics, French, German,
Russian, and Arabic. The department provides instruction in 14 languages
and offers undergraduate majors in 6 different programs, teacher
certification in 4 language programs, and Master’s degrees in Comparative
Literature, French, German, and Spanish. It also works as an active
partner with the PhD in Linguistics. Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
is a campus leader in the study and use of instructional technology, and
the home of innovative programs that move learning beyond the traditional
classroom.

The University of South Carolina has been designated as one of only 73
public and 35 private academic institutions with “very high research
activity” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The
Carnegie Foundation also lists USC as having strong community engagement.
The University has over 28,000 students on the main campus (and over
43,000 students system-wide), 350 degree programs, and a nationally-ranked
library system. Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, has a population
of over 650,000 in the greater metropolitan area. The University of South
Carolina is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. Minorities
and women are especially encouraged to apply. The University of South
Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities
or decisions for qualified persons on the basis of race, color, religion,
sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation or veteran
status.

Relevant Classroom Use

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)

Download audio file (dGenerate_Michael_Berry.MP3)

Download it here (right-click to download, file size: 8.2 MB).

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

Interview Topic Index

0:00-0:51 – Introduction
0:51-4:00 – Jia Zhangke’s career development
4:00-7:45 – Jia’s recent controversy at Melbourne
7:46-11:45 – Jia as a political filmmaker
11:45-15:20 – Moving beyond the mavericks
15:20-17:30 – Distributing the digital revolution

Selected Publications by Michael Berry

• Jia Zhang-ke’s Hometown Trilogy (British Film Institute & Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2009)
• A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2008)
• Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia University Press, 2005; Traditional Chinese edition, Rye Field, 2007; Simplified Chinese Edition, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008)

Book Length Translations by Michael Berry

• The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai, by Wang Anyi.  Translation by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan, with an Afterword by Michael Berry (Columbia University Press, 2008).
• To Live by Yu Hua.  Translation and Afterword by Michael Berry (Anchor
  Books, 2003).
• Nanjing 1937: A Love Story by Ye Zhaoyan.  Translation and introduction by Michael Berry (Columbia University Press, 2002, Faber & Faber, 2003, Anchor Books, 2004).
• Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up by Chang Ta-chun.  Translation and introduction by Michael Berry (Columbia University Press, 2000).

Relevant Classroom Use

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)

Download audio file (dGenerate_Tami_Blumenfield.mp3)

Download it here (right-click to download). (File size: 20.7 MB)

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

PUBLICATIONS:

• 2008: “Anthropologists in Motion.” In Anthropology News, January 2008.
• 2007: “Best Practices for IGERT Sustainability.” Co-authored with Renate Sadrozinski and Maresi Nerad. Report for the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education at the University of Washington.
• 2004: Contemporary Moso Adaptations to Mainstream Culture: Examining the Influence of Education and Tourism. In Zhang Xisheng, ed. Ethnic Minorities and the Market Economy. Kunming: Yunnan University Press.
• 2004: “Walking Marriages”. In Anthropology News 45 (5).
• 2003: “A Country of Daughters: China’s Na Women.” In Nervy Girl (May). Portland, Oregon: Independent Publishing Northwest.
• 2003: “Na Education in the Face of Modernity.” In Landscapes of Diversity: Indigenous Knowledge, Sustainable Livelihoods and Resource Governance in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia. Xu Jianchu and Stephen Mikesell, eds. Pp. 487-494. Kunming: Yunnan Science and Technology Press.
• 2003: “Languages and Lives: Bilingual Education and the Quest for Naxi and Moso Identity.” Ao-Tung (XXI): Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College East Asian Studies Program.

Interview index by times and subjects:

• 00:00 – 00:53: Tami’s recent projects in regards to Chinese film
• 00:54 – 03:55: How did Tami get involved with the Moso community and how did her research focus shift from the community to the filmmaking process of local people?
• 03:56 – 05:59: The role of academics in anthropological research
• 06:00 – 09:09: The intention and result of Tami’s projects
• 09:10 – 12:03: Example of the gap between local people’s understanding of how their words will be used and the consequences of working with filmmakers
• 12: 04 – 13:25: The significance of making people more conscious about the filmmaking process when they work with filmmakers
• 13:26 – 16:42: Recent documentaries from China that have impressed Tami the most
• 16:43 – 18:36: How films are used in Tami’s class
• 18:37 – 19:59: Issue of representation in visual anthropology, who has the right to portray other people, and how the real life of people who are portrayed has been affected by those images
• 20:00 – 21:23: The myth of indigenous people develops into a localized economy around film production

Relevant Classroom Use

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)

Download audio file (dGenerate_Lu_Xinyu.mp3)

Download it here (right-click to download). (File Size:7.7 MB)

dGF:  What projects are you currently working on?

LX:  My current research project still focuses on the New Chinese Documentary Movement.  I hope to contextualize this movement in the development of Chinese cinema, as well as world cinema today in order to better understand and reflect on the unique contribution of Chinese documentary.  I think it is important to examine why Chinese documentary has become a movement and its significance to world cinema in general.  This is why I have been attracted to this subject.  My experience in New York this year as a visiting scholar enables me to approach this issue from a broader perspective.  Both Chinese social development and the trajectory of Chinese cinema are interconnected with the process of globalization.  All of these aspects should be discussed in relation to each other.

dGF:  We know that your PhD degree was in aesthetics.  What led you to study independent Chinese film and documentary?

LX:  My PhD dissertation was about dramatic theory.  I was concerned about the reason for the decline of the modern Chinese drama.  In order to understand this, I turned to classical Western dramas and poetics tradition.  I felt that using the Western concept of “comedy” and “tragedy” to analyze and categorize Chinese theater was very problematic.  During my study of Aristotle’s Art of Poetry and its relation to ancient Greek drama, I found a vital change in the concept of “tragedy”.  In ancient times, tragedy, according to Aristotle, was closely linked to the hero and his eminent family.  Heroes were all from royal or noble families.  Why? The explanation given by Aristotle was “happen to.”  But my research found out that heroes became heroes because they were responsible to the whole city-state and society.  But in modern individualistic society, ordinary people become the ones who bear the weight of society.  People from the lowest social class are most likely to be the victims of social transformation.  Therefore the meaning of tragedy has fundamentally changed from the dramatic action of the noble family to the depiction of the tragic life and psychological world of ordinary people.  In this sense, it is the life of ordinary people that embodies the meaning of social tragedy.

I started to teach at Fudan University after my graduation in 1993.  I had some communication with TV stations for my Special Feature Documentary class.  At that time there was a heated discussion about the definition of documentary.  1993 was the year when New Documentary Movement started to be legitimized and accepted within the system.  From then on, I found that TV documentary rather than literature was paying attention to ordinary people.  Literature, on the contrary, entered a self-reclusive, narcissistic stage.  It was documentary that facilitated the dialogue between art and society.  That was very appealing to me since documentary functioned as a continuation of my interest in the transformation of tragedy.  I started to use aesthetic theories to understand Chinese documentary.

dGF:  When you say TV documentary, do you mean “special feature documentary?” (zhuan ti ji lu pian)

LX:  In fact, the TV documentary at that time was a rebellion against special feature documentary.  When we came to the “TV time,” we abandoned the word “documentary” because it belonged to the “Film time”, and conveyed a sense of propaganda.  People who worked for TV stations replaced “documentary” with “special features” (zhuan ti pian).  Therefore at the end of 1980s, when we started to turn against the fake, grandiose and empty formula of the special feature, we redefined and rediscovered the concept of documentary.

Why TV stations?  TV workers were very sensitive to social changes.  The New Documentary Movement started from television because, compared to the film system, these people had closer contact with society and more opportunities to use film equipment.  Accessibility to equipment is also an important reason.  Many first generation independent filmmakers built up their relationship with TV stations through a variety of ways, either private or public.  That was the only way for them to get a hold of equipment.  The 1990s were also the time for the reformation of Chinese television system, which created a flexible space for independent filmmakers.  Many filmmakers took advantage of that space to work on their own projects, including some of the most famous directors like Wu Wenguang.

dGF:  If you look back at that time, how does it compare with the documentary scene in China today?

LX:  The first generation independent Chinese documentary makers had very strong political intention.  They held a clear attitude to criticize and rebel against the mainstream coercive ideology.  Political intention and social responsibility were prominent features among the first generation.  These directors preferred to understand society through observation, to approach Chinese society from the bottom up.  Therefore they were more willing to use the observational mode of direct cinema, combining Frederick Wiseman and Ogawa Shinsuke.

Wiseman’s observation was objective and dispassionate.  He maintained certain distance from his subjects; his observation was cold in some sense.  Ogawa used observational mode in a more interventional way.  He treated his subjects as his own self.  The first generation borrowed from both Wiseman and Ogawa to depict Chinese underclass as an objective “other.”  But this “other” was positioned equally to the directors themselves.  This is the major difference from the second generation who emerged at the end of 1990s.  With the emergence of digital video, filmmakers are no longer dependent on TV stations.  Many young directors use the camera to express themselves.

The new generation emphasizes individualism and self-expression, while the previous generation focused on realism.  The first generation placed emphasis on the “other”; and the second generation expresses the existence of the self.  In a broader sense, it is the existence of both “other” and “self” that constitute Chinese society today.  So there’s some interesting dynamic between the two generations.  The first generation directors claimed that “We are not artists. We are just artisans.”  This claim emphasizes the position of the director in relation to reality.  They do not want to impose their subjectivity on reality, but to allow the conflicts of reality to be revealed from the text without authorial manipulation.  The second generation directors see themselves as artists.  So their aesthetic style incorporates more performativity and self-reflexivity.  Interestingly, they may have never heard about these theories, but they instinctively created these styles to break the boundary between what’s in front of the camera and what’s behind it, and the boundary between subjectivity and the other.  They boldly show themselves in the film, therefore the boundaries between the director and film subjects, public and private disappear as well.  In this sense, they are very avant-garde.  They break established rules and create new aesthetic styles.

This is the current situation of independent Chinese film and documentary.  Meanwhile, those documentaries of social concerns still exist in an influential and powerful way.  So independent Chinese documentary or independent Chinese cinema today is very diversified.

dGF:  You’ve already mentioned many, but I still want to ask what are the major issues that you are most interested in, or you think are important to us as independent cinema lovers.

LX:  I’m most interested in how Independent Chinese cinema and New Documentary Movement build up their connection with society.  How do they redefine the concept of documentary and art?  What is art?  We used to imagine art as a self-contained pure aesthetic form.  This concept was quite influential after 1980s.  But now we are facing the dramatic transformation of Chinese society, both temporally and spatially.  Everyone’s life is inevitably involved in and affected by this process.  How should art react to these changes?  As a film director who bears this social pressure, how to express and represent his understanding of this society, his expectations for the society and for life itself?  All of these construct a new artistic platform for us to understand Chinese society today.

If we only learn Chinese from economic and social perspectives, we’ll never understand the psychological changes Chinese people are going through during this transformation.  By watching independent documentaries, we not only experienced the psychological world of the directors, but also got to experience the existence of people at different social levels through the lens of camera, especially the existence of the underclass and how they struggled through these changes, their pains and their needs.  This is extremely important to me.

dGF:  What would you say have been the most impressive or most significant works of Chinese documentary in the last few years?

LX:  There are a lot.  I’ve written extensively in my essays.  For example, West of the Tracks.  It focuses on how the traditional mainstream community becomes a marginalized group in Chinese society.  Working class used to be the dominant class in China, but they become marginalized under today’s market economy and social transformation.  How does the changing life of this huge group of people affect Chinese society and the industrialization process of the world?  What is its significance to globalization?  West of the Tracks pushes us to think about these questions.  The director has a very interesting view of art.  He says, “If you think my film is about laid-off workers, it means you haven’t fully understood my film.  My real focus is on human life.”  As long as it concerns human life, it has something to do with art.  Art is always about human life.  Politics and economics are the power that is behind human life.  We see the complexity of power relationship through the fate of individual and therefore to reflect on the problems we come across.

Another example would be Before the Flood, which is about the Three Gorges Project.  It is a powerful combination of broad social background and individual lives, a vivid depiction at both macro and micro level.  Bing Ai also takes Three Gorges Project as its subject matter, but explores it from a feminist perspective.  Woman’s affinity for land, for river makes the film extremely powerful and penetrating.  It allows us to experience the development of Chinese society and the tragedy of Chinese people from within.

Relevant Classroom Use

First is a list of titles from film critic Richard Brody, which he posted on the New Yorker blog on the occasion of Evan Ossnos’ feature magazine article on Jia Zhangke, as well as the publication of “Jia Xiang,” a new collection of interviews and essays by Jia.  Reading the second paragraph, you may see why we at dGenerate took special interest in this list:

For English readers, there are several terrific pieces of work to pursue. Michael Berry, at the University of California Santa Barbara, has recently published “Jia Zhangke’s ‘Hometown Trilogy’: Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures,” a concise and detailed paperback on Jia’s early work, which Berry was kind enough to share with me in galleys. A polymath who has also translated Yu Hua’s novel “To Live” (which became a Zhang Yimou-directed film), Berry has also worked as an interpreter during U.S. visits by virtually all of greater China’s leading filmmakers, and published a very valuable collection of interviews with directors entitled “Speaking In Images.” Jason McGrath’s essay “The Independent Cinema of Jia Zhangke” appears in “The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century,” edited by Zhang Zhen. Ni Zhen, a longtime Chinese film professor, has published the entertaining “Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China’s Fifth Generation,” which has been translated into English by Chris Berry. (Let’s hope someone soon takes on the project of translating Jia’s work for a similar audience.) Philip P. Pan’s acclaimed “Out of Mao’s Shadow” recounts filmmaker Hu Jie’s travails in making some of China’s most controversial underground documentaries. Yingjin Zhang’s “Chinese National Cinema” provides a concise overview on the first century of Chinese film.

Finally, I highly recommend the writing of Dudley Andrew, who teaches at Yale, and who was kind enough to share his work on Jia’s connection to André Bazin; Shelly Kraicer, who is monitoring the contemporary scene and blogging for the website of dGenerate Films; and the critic Kevin Lee, who wrote an insightful piece on Jia Zhangke that remains as valuable today as it was when it appeared in 2003.

We also received a list from Norman Spencer, who has been a stalwart supporter of Chinese independent cinema, including two filmmakers represented in our catalog, Jian Yi and Ying Liang. Here are titles he personally recommended for a dGenerate Films office library:

* Michael Berry, XIAO WU – PLATFORM – UNKNOWN PLEASURES: JIA ZHENG
KE’S “HOMETOWN TRILOGY”,

* Shaoyi Sun & Li Xun, LIGHTS! CAMERA! KAI SHI! : IN DEPTH INTERVIEWS
WITH CHINA”S NEW GENERATION OF MOVIE DIRECTORS

* Paul Pickowicz & Yingjin Zhang, FROM UNDERGROUND TO INDEPENDENT:
ALTERNATIVE FILM CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA.

*Jason McGrath, POSTSOCIALIST MODERNITY: CHINESE CINEMA, LITERATURE
AND CRITICISM IN THE MARKET AGE

* Zhang Zhen, THE URBAN GENERATION: CHINESE CINEMA AND SOCIETY AT THE
TURN OF THE 21st CENTURY

*Michael Berry, SPEAKING IN IMAGES: INTERVIEWS WITH CONTEMPORARY
CHINESE FILM DIRECTORS

There are certainly many other titles out there – you are welcome to mention any outstanding recommendations (as well as any upcoming releases we should expect) by leaving a comment.

Relevant Classroom Use