New Chinese Cinemas
Forms, Identities, Politics

Analyses the changing forms and significance of filmmaking in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Nick Browne (Edited by), Paul G. Pickowicz (Edited by), Vivian Sobchack (Edited by), Esther Yau (Edited by)

9780521448772, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 23 February 1996

276 pages, 46 b/w illus.
22.7 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.4 kg

"...New Chinese Cinemas...is undoubtedly the best singel-volume publication on contemporary Chinese cinema in English to date." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars

New Chinese Cinemas analyses the changing forms and significance of filmmaking in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since the end of the Cultural Revolution, with a particular emphasis on how film comments on the profound social changes that have occurred in East Asia over the past two decades. Considering in detail both conservative and progressive stances on economic 'modernisation', it also demonstrates how film has been an important formal structure and social document in the interpretation of these changes. The essays collected here, which were specially commissioned for this volume, also offer extended analyses of the important trends, styles and work that define Chinese filmmaking in the 1980s.

List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgments
Note on the Romanisation of Chinese
Introduction Nick Browne
Part I. Film in the People's Republic: 1. Spatiality and subjectivity in Xie Jin's film melodrama of the new period Ma Ning
2. Society and subjectivity: on the political economy of Chinese melodrama Nick Browne
3. Huang Jianxin and the notion of post-socialism Paul G. Pickowicz
4. Neither one thing nor another? Towards a study of the viewing subject and Chinese cinema in the 1980s Chris Berry
Part II. Film in Taiwan and Hong Kong: 5. Remapping Taipei Fredric Jameson
6. The Ideology of initiation: the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien William Tay
7. The return of the father: Hong Kong new wave and its Chinese context in the 1980s Li Cheuk-To
8. Border crossing: mainland China's presence in Hong Kong cinema Esther Yau
9. Two films from Hong Kong: parody and allegory Leo Ou-Fan Lee.

Subject Areas: Films, cinema [APF]