Chinese independent cinema : past, present, and a questionable future / edited by Chris Berry [and three others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Berry, Chris (Marine scientist), editor.

Series:

Critical Asian cinemas ; Volume 7.

Critical Asian Cinemas Series ; Volume 7

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--China.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (314 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam, Netherlands : Amsterdam University Press, [2025]

Summary:

Independent cinema in China is not only made outside the commercial system but also without being submitted for censorship. We know that for several decades it has been the crucible out of which China’s most exciting new films have flowed. The essays in this volume interrogate what else we think we know. Did it really start with Wu Wenguang and Bumming in Beijing in 1990, or can its roots be traced back much earlier? What are its aesthetics? And its ethics, including of gender and class? Where do audiences watch these films in China and how do they circulate? And, since the 2017 Film Law defined uncensored films as illegal, is independent Chinese cinema still alive? What does it mean today? And does it have a future? The essays in this anthology—many by exciting new scholars—explore these urgent questions.

Contents:

Cover

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chris Berry, Luke Robinson, Lydia Wu, and Sabrina Qiong Yu

Genealogies

1. The Soil and the Scar

A Genealogy of Photography and Documentary in Post-Mao China

Zoe Meng Jiang

2. Video Relics

Hu Jie and the Official Style

Max Berwald

Ethics and Aesthetics

3. Hu Bo's Ethics of Realism

Cecília Mello

4. The Filmmaker as Feminist

Jinyan Zeng

5. Of Found Objects and Projected Things

The Relational Field in Wang Bing's West of the Tracks and Ma Li's Born in Beijing

Yün Peng

Beside the Screen: Independent Cinema as Social Practice

6. In Dependence and in Relation

A Relational Sociological Approach to Chinese Independent Cinema

Seio Nakajima

7. Distribution and Exhibition of Independent Film in China

Informal Infrastructure and Its Affordances

Chris Berry, Luke Robinson, and Sabrina Qiong Yu

8. Mediating the New Alternative Film Culture

An Ethnographic Study of Post-Independent Exhibition Practices Since 2017

Xiang Fan

9. Three Modes of Independent Creative Documentary Production and the Rise of the Industrial Mode

Kiki Tianqi Yu

Community and Engagement

10. Cinematic Fabulation

Trans Representation in Miss Jin Xing

Hongwei Bao

11. Village Film and Place-Based Film Archive

Towards an Ecological and Archival Chinese Independent Documentary

Zimu Zhang

12. The Ethic of Collaboration

Rethinking Chinese Independent Cinema's Engagement with Grassroots Creativity

Kaiyang Xu

Index

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1. Inner pages of People's Mourning. On the verso page, a young worker is showing a letter written in his blood: 'Beloved Premier Zhou, we will defend you with our blood and lives.' The recto page shows a wide shot in which the crowd applaud the

Figure 1.2. Inner pages of People's Mourning show people copying down poems in their notebooks or on their palms and putting up posters and wreaths around the Monument to the People's Heroes. (Author's photograph.)

Figure 1.3. Screenshot from Drawing the Sword. Due to restricted access to state archives, only a lower-resolution version of this film is currently available for studies.

Figure 1.4. Screenshots from Public. (Reproduced with permission of Elaine Wing-ah Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga.)

Figure 2.1. After retrieving a lock of her hair from a crumpled 1966 newspaper, Hu's camera confronts Lin's physical remains. Here, he holds her hair in one hand, filming it with the other. (Reproduced with permission of Hu Jie.)

Figure 3.1. An Elephant Sitting Still: Huang Ling and Wei Bu at school.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Figure 3.2. An Elephant Sitting Still: Wang Jin and his dog.

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

1-003-69238-9

1-04-079725-3

90-485-5540-X

OCLC:

1512317639