Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema provides a historically informed examination of independent moving image works made between 1990 and 2010 in China. Showcasing an evolving personal mode of narrating memory, documenting reality, and inscribing subjectivity in over sixteen selected works that range from narrative film and documentary to experimental video and digital media (even including a multimedia avant-garde play), this book presents a provocative portrait of the independent filmmakers as a peculiarly pained yet active group of historical subjects of the transitional, post-socialist era. Through a connected investigation of cultural and cinematic concepts including historical consciousness, personal memory, narrative, performance, subjectivity, spatiality, and the body, Wang weaves a critical narrative of the formation of a unique post-socialist cultural consciousness that enables independent cinema and media to become a highly significant and effective conduit for historical thinking in contemporary China. Covering directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Jia Zhangke, Jiang Wen, Lou Ye, Meng Jinghui, Wang Bing, Wang Guangli, Duan Jinchuan, Cui Zi'en, Shi Tou, and Tang Danhong, this book is essential reading for all students and scholars in Chinese film.

Through a connected investigation of cultural and cinematic concepts, Wang weaves a critical narrative of the formation of a unique post-socialist cultural consciousness that enables independent cinema and media to become a highly significant and effective conduit for historical thinking in contemporary China.

Non-Cinema: Global Digital Film-making and the Multitude provides an original film-philosophy through which to understand low budget digital filmmaking from around the globe. It draws upon a wide range of western and non-western philosophers, physicists, theorists of 'Third Cinema,' and contemporary film theorists and film-philosophers in order to argue that the future of cinema lies at the margins, in the extreme, the overlooked and the under-funded – the sort that distributors, exhibitors and audiences would not consider to be cinema at all, hence "non-cinema." Analysing numerous films, William Brown argues that contemporary low-budget digital cinema is also through its digital form a political cinema that suggests that we are not detached observers of the world, but entangled participants therewith. Non-Cinema constructs this argument by looking at work by established filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi and Michael Winterbottom, as well as lesser known work from places as diverse as Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and Africa.

This book examines the aesthetic qualities of particular Chinese-language films and the rich artistic traditions from which they spring. It brings together leading experts in the field, and encompasses detailed and wide-ranging case studies of films such as Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Spring in a Small Town, 24 City, and The Grandmaster, and filmmakers including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Jia Zhangke, Chen Kaige, Fei Mu, Zhang Yimou, Johnnie To, and Wong Kar-wai. By illuminating the form and style of Chinese films from across cinema history, The Poetics of Chinese Cinema testifies to the artistic value and uniqueness of Chinese-language filmmaking.

The present volume provides an overview of new forms of popular memory, in particular critical memory, of the Mao era. Focusing on the processes of private production, public dissemination, and social sanctioning of narratives of the past in contemporary China, it examines the relation between popular memories and their social construction as historical knowledge. The three parts of the book are devoted to the shifting boundary between private and public in the press and media, the reconfiguration of elite and popular discourses in cultural productions (film, visual art, and literature), and the emergence of new discourses of knowledge through innovative readings of unofficial sources. Popular memories pose a challenge to the existing historiography of the first thirty years of the People’s Republic of China. Despite the recent backlash, these more critical reflections are beginning to transform the mainstream narrative of the Mao era in China. Public discussions of key episodes in the history of the People’s Republic, in particular the Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957, the Great Famine of 1959–1961, and the Cultural Revolution, have proliferated in the last fifteen years. These discussions are qualitatively different from previous expressions of traumatic or nostalgic memories of Mao in the 1980s and the 1990s respectively. They reflect a growing dissatisfaction with the authoritarian control over history exercised by the Chinese state, and often they make use of the new spaces provided for counter-hegemonic narratives by social media and the growing private economy in the 2000s. Unofficial or independent journals, self-published books, social media groups, independent documentary films, private museums, oral history projects, and archival research by amateur historians, all of which analyzed in this collection, have contributed to these embryonic public or semi-public dialogues. “An excellent guide to the independent journalism, cultural production, and amateur histories that are transforming the mainstream narrative of the Mao era in China. Rich in detail and sound in analysis, these studies document the emergence of critical memory in Chinese society. A valuable resource for students and scholars.” —Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia; author of The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History “Popular memories of the Mao era are signposts of contemporary politics and culture. This volume features exciting new research by distinguished scholars. Extremely rich and readable, the chapters in this collection illuminate both China’s past and present. A timely and important contribution.” —Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania; author of The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China

Fragmented Memories and Screening Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution argues that films and TV dramas about the Cultural Revolution made after China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 tend to represent personal memories in a markedly sentimental, nostalgic, and fragmented manner. This new trend is a significant departure from earlier films about the subject, which are generally interpreted as national allegories, not private expressions of grief, regret or other personal feelings. With China entering a postsocialist era, the ideological conflation of socialism and global capitalism has generated enough cultural ambiguity to allow a space for the expression of personalized reminiscences of the past. By presenting these personal memories—in effect alternative narratives to official history—on screen, individuals now seem to have some agency in narrating and constructing history. At the same time such autonomy can be easily undermined since the promotion of the sentiment of nostalgia is often subjected to commodification. Sentimental treatments of the past may simply be a marketing strategy. Underplaying political issues is also a ‘safer’ way for films and TV dramas to secure public release in mainland China. Meng concludes that the new mode of representing the past is shaped by the current sociopolitical conditions: these personal memories and micro-narratives can be understood as the defining ways of remembering in China’s postsocialist era. ‘Fragmented Memories and Screening Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution takes a comprehensive look at contemporary screen depictions of the Cultural Revolution. The book convincingly ties close readings of the works analysed with broader social and cultural phenomena that already are hot topics of study and debate, offering something original while also being closely engaged with existing scholarship.’ —Jason McGrath, University of Minnesota ‘Breaking through the tired dichotomy between personal and collective narratives, individual memory and grand history, this refreshing book sheds much light on film memories of the Cultural Revolution in the post-socialist millennium. In a limpid and engaging style, Jing Meng probes memory’s nostalgia and imbrication with the collective destiny, and critiques the personal focus aligned with neoliberal economy and commodification.’ —Ban Wang, Stanford University

This book traces the cultural transformation of nostalgia on the Chinese screen over the past three decades. It explores how filmmakers from different generations have engaged politically with China’s rapidly changing post-socialist society as it has been formed through three mutually constitutive frameworks: political discourse, popular culture and state-led media commercialisation. The book offers a new, critical model for understanding relationships between filmmakers, industry and the State.

Through detailed analyses of key contemporary documentary titles, this book reveals the ways in which independent films probe, question and challenge the dominant ideas and narratives circulating in China's state-sanctioned media.

This cutting-edge book examines the rapidly developing scene of Chinese independent documentary, arguably the most courageous player in contemporary Chinese visual culture. The authors explore two areas that are of special interest to China studies and film studies, respectively: (1) filming the everyday in twenty-first-century China to foreground contestation and diversity and (2) exploring the aesthetic of remembering in an embodied documentary practice, which turns the gaze on artists themselves and encourages the viewer’s engagement with the filmed subjects and environment. Highlighting documentary contestation in China, the book traces its cacophony of expressions, some of it featuring confrontations with domineering elites, some of it highlighting negotiations among the independent filmmakers themselves. Their goal is not a “movement” that seeks to establish and impose a single truth, but rather a creative dynamic that fosters a community of tolerance and respects diverse forms of expression. Independent documentary is quite literally a moving target that is witnessing ongoing and widening diversity and complexity when it comes to directors, themes, aesthetics, human subjects, audiences, and impact. The authors stress the enormous potential of cultural production that features non-elites (including amateurs) and that dwells on the everyday, the bottom up, the grassroots, the seemingly mundane, and the apparently marginal. The book’s emphasis on contemporary issues and its discussion of aesthetic experiments will appeal to all readers interested in China’s culture, media, politics, and society.

The Formation of Chinese Art Cinema: 1990–2003 examines the development of Chinese art film in the People’s Republic of China from 1990, when the first Sixth Generation film Mama was released, to 2003, when authorities acknowledged the legitimacy of underground filmmakers. Through an exploration of the production and consecration mechanisms of the new art wave and its representative styles, this book argues that the art wave of the 1990s fundamentally defined Chinese art cinema. In particular, this vital art wave was not enabled by democratic liberalism, but by the specific industrial development, in which the film system transitioned from Socialist propaganda into a commercialized entity. Allowing Chinese art film to grow but at the same time denying its legitimacy, this paradoxical transition process shaped Chinese art film’s institutional and aesthetical alternative positioning, which eventually helped consolidate the art wave into art cinema. Ultimately, this book is a history of the Chinese portion of global art cinema, which also reveals the complex Chinese cultural experiences during the Reform Era.