China on screen
Subtitle: cinema and nation
By: Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar.
Contributors: Farquhar, Mary Ann, 1949-
Series: Film and culture series; Film and culture.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 313
Subjects: Motion pictures -- China -- History
Description: "In China on Screen, Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, leaders in the field of Chinese film studies, explore more than one hundred years of Chinese cinema and nation. Providing new perspectives on key movements, themes, and filmmakers, Berry and Farquhar analyze the films of a variety of directors and actors, including Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Gong Li, Wong Kar-wai, and Ang Lee. They argue for the abandonment of "national cinema" as an analytic tool and propose "cinema and the national" as a more productive framework. With this approach, they show how movies from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora construct and contest different ideas of Chinese nation - as empire, republic, or ethnicity, and complicated by gender, class, style, transnationalism, and more. Among the issues and themes covered are the tension between operatic and realist modes, male and female star images, transnational production and circulation of Chinese films, the image of the good foreigner - all related to different ways of imagining nation. Comprehensive and provocative, China on Screen is a crucial work of film analysis."--Book cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.