China's iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-First Century

by Matthew D. Johnson (Editor), Luke Vulpiani (Editor), Keith B. Wagner (Editor), Kiki Tianqi Yu (Editor)

Overview

This innovative collection of essays on twenty-first century Chinese cinema and moving image culture features contributions from an international community of scholars, critics, and practitioners. Taken together, their perspectives make a compelling case that the past decade has witnessed a radical transformation of conventional notions of cinema. Following China's accession to the WTO in 2001, personal and collective experiences of changing social conditions have added new dimensions to the increasingly diverse Sinophone media landscape, and provided a novel complement to the existing edifice of blockbusters, documentaries, and auteur culture. The numerous 'iGeneration' productions and practices examined in this volume include 3D and IMAX films, experimental documentaries, animation, visual aides-mémoires, and works of pirated pastiche. Together, they bear witness to the emergence of a new Chinese cinema characterized by digital and, trans-media representational strategies, the blurring of private/public distinctions, and dynamic reinterpretations of the very notion of 'cinema' itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623565954
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/22/2014
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Matthew D. Johnson is Assistant Professor of East Asian History at Grinnell College, US. As a doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego he conducted one of the first oral histories of China's early socialist film industry. His scholarly writing focuses on the history of the motion picture in China; documentary cinema and practice; public cultural service and security; and U.S.-China transnational relations. He is a member of the editorial board of the Jourbanal of Chinese Cinemas.

Keith B. Wagner is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies and Social Theory in the Graduate School of Film and Digital Media at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea. Before moving to Asia, he completed his M.Phil degree at the University of Cambridge and his PhD at King's College London. He is the co-editor of Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique (2011) and is completing a manuscript based on his dissertation entitled Living with Uncertainty: Precarious Labor in Global Cinema.

Tianqi Yu is a filmmaker, and Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of Nottingham, China campus (Ningbo). She received an MPhil in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, the University of Westminster. Her research focuses on documentary, amateur cinema, Chinese cinema and visual arts. Yu is completing her monograph ‘My' Self On Camera - First Person Documentary Practice in Twenty-first Century China (Edinburgh University Press). As a filmmaker, her works include Photographing Shenzhen (2007, Discovery), and Memory of Home (2009, collected by DSLCollection). Yu is also a member of the editorial board of the Jourbanal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

Luke Vulpiani is a PhD candidate at King's College London under the supervision of Dr Viktor Fan. He has a 1st Class BA Degree in Film Studies from The University of Warwick and a MA in Chinese Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His research focuses on aesthetic theory, Chinese film and the relationship between film and philosophy, psychoanalysis and politics.

Table of Contents

Foreword, Chris Berry
Acknowledgements
Notes on Transliteration

INTRODUCTION: China's iGeneration Cinema, Keith B. Wagner, Tianqi Yu, Luke Vulpiani
PART I. New Technologies
CHAPTER 1
Tianqi YU "Toward a Communicative Practice: Female First-Person Documentary in Twenty-first Century China"

CHAPTER 2
Paola VOCI "Quasi-Documentary, Cellflix, and Web Spoofs: Chinese Movies' Other Visual Pleasures"

CHAPTER 3
Weihua WU "Individuality, State Discourse, and Visual Representation: The Imagination and Practices of the iGeneration in Chinese Animation"

CHAPTER 4
Bingfeng DONG "Cinema of Exhibition: Film in Chinese Contemporary Art"

PART II. Aesthetics

CHAPTER 5
Luke VULPIANI "Goodbye to the Grim Real, Hello to What Comes Next: The Moment of Passage from the Sixth Generation to the iGeneration"

CHAPTER 6
Ling ZHANG "Digitizing City Symphony, Stabilizing the Shadow of Time: Montage and Temporal-Spatial Construction in San Yuan Li"

CHAPTER 7
Dan GAO "From Pirate to Kino-eye: A Genealogical Tale of Film Re-Distribution in China"

CHAPTER 8
Keith B. WAGNER "Xue Jianqiang as Reckless Documentarian: Underdevelopment and Juvenile Crime in post-WTO China"

PART III. Social Engagement

CHAPTER 9
Yiman WANG "Of Animals and Men: Toward A Theory of Docu-ani-mentary"

CHAPTER 10
Ying QIAN "Working with Rubble: Montage, Tweets, and the Reconstruction of an Activist Cinema"

CHAPTER 11
Jia TAN "Provincializing the Chinese Mediascape: Cantonese Digital Activism in Southern China"

PART IV. Platforms and Politics
CHAPTER 12
Jeesoon HONG with Matthew D. JOHNSON "Shanghai Expo and Screen-Spaces: Big Screens and New Collectivity"

CHAPTER 13
Ma RAN "Regarding the Grassroots Chinese Independent Film Festivals: Regional Assemblage and Abnormal Film Networking"

CHAPTER 14
Matthew D. JOHNSON "Wu Wenguang and the NGO Aesthetic"

CHAPTER 15
Xiaomei CHEN "The Cinematic Deng Xiaoping: Reform or Restoration?"


PART V: Online Audiences

CHAPTER 16
Ralph PARFECT "You Must Believe There is Such a Person in This World": Internet Contention of Zhang Yimou's Sexual Storytelling in Under the Hawthorn Tree/Shanzhashu Zhi Lian"

CHAPTER 17
Xiao LIU "From the Glaring Sun to the Flying Bullets: The Dilemma of Elliptical Memories in "post-" Era Chinese Cinema"

Notes on Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

… these essays successfully achieve the aim of ‘mapping out where this moving image culture exists within the context of China’s individualizing, consumption-oriented, urban and technologically mutable post-WTO society’ (1), and the book will certainly engender further research in this rich and evolving subject area.” -Alphaville Jourbanal

“China ’s iGeneration successfully satisfies the reader’s curiosity about China – a worldupcoming nation, and demonstrates the transformation and development of Chinese Cinema from different perspectives through essays written by both Chinese and non- Chinese writers … All in all, the strength of China’s iGeneration is in its careful introduction of the uniqueness of Chinese culture for those who have not been exposed to such concepts before. At the same time, it expresses the authors’ deep understanding and knowledge of fastchanging dynamics in Chinese cinema culture. We all know that China is the world’s second-largest economy, with a rich and unique culture and historical background. Now China’s iGeneration presents the ‘new’ generation through its cinematic point of view and provides readers with a fresh perspective on this great nation.” -Chika Okuyama, Film Matters

From the Publisher