1st Edition

Chinese Film in the Twenty-First Century Movements, Genres, Intermedia

Edited By Corey Schultz, Cecília Mello Copyright 2024
    210 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book examines Chinese film in the twenty-first century. Organized around the themes "movements," "genres," and "intermedia," it reflects on how Chinese cinema has changed, adapted, and evolved over past decades and prognosticates as to its future trajectories. It considers how established film genres in China have adapted and transformed themselves, and discusses current shifts in documentary filmmaking, the ethos and practices of "grassroots intellectual" independent filmmakers, and the adaption of foreign film genres to serve the ideological and political needs of the present. It also explores how film is drawing on the socio-historical and political contexts of the past to create new cinematic discourses and the ways film is providing a voice to previously marginalised ethnic groups. In addition, the book analyses the influences of past aesthetic traditions on the creative and artistic expressions of twenty-first-century films and cinema’s relation to other media forms, including folktales, moving image installations, architecture, and painting. Throughout, the book assesses how Chinese films have been conceptualized, examined, and communicated domestically and abroad and emphasizes the importance of new directions in Chinese film, thus highlighting the plurality, vitality, and hybridity of Chinese cinema in the twenty-first century.

    Contents

     

     

    List of Figures

    List of Contributors

    Acknowledgements

     

    A New Century of Chinese Film and Chinese Film Scholarship

    Corey Kai Nelson SCHULTZ and Cecília MELLO

     

     

    Part I: Movements

     

    1.     Chinese Documentary: Towards a Minjian Poetics

    Bruno LESSARD

     

    2.     Sojourners on the Rivers and Lakes: Chinese Independent Filmmakers as Jianghu Ke (江湖客)

    Clemens VON HASELBERG

     

    3.     The South China New Wave: Cinema as Xinxiang (Affective-Ideational Imagery)

    LIU Siqi

     

    4.     Live-streaming and Saved Footage in Zhu Shengze’s Present.Perfect.

    Regiane ISHII and Cecília MELLO

     

     

    Part II: Genres

     

    5.     Mainland New Year Films: From Genre to Cinema Season, 1997–2004

    Qi AI

     

    6.     The Chinese “Quasi-Noir” Cinema Tradition: From Fante Pian to Neo-Noir

    Stefano LOCATI

     

    7.     Re-animating Chinese Myths: Mythology and/as Mythologies in Contemporary Chinese Animation

    Thomas William WHYKE and Melissa Shani BROWN

     

     

    Part III: Intermedia

     

    8.     Film in Brushstrokes: An Intermedial Study on the Integration of Traditional Chinese Painting in Mr. No Problem and Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains

    Qiwen WU

     

    9.     Strategic Localization and Screen Adaptations of Journey to the West from the 1920s to the 2010s

    Hening ZHANG

     

    10.  The World and Beijing World Park: Film Tourism, Intermedia, Embodiment, and the Fake

    Corey Kai Nelson SCHULTZ

     

    Index

    Biography

    Corey Schultz is Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

    Cecília Mello is Professor at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.