Rui Jiao; Qi Ai; Bérénice M. Reynaud
Rui Jiao
University Paris 3, Year 3 Dphil candidate in Film Studies
Title: Deromanticizing the modern world: modernity and nostalgia in the films of Jia Zhangke
Abstract: This essay studies the various representations of modernization and the poetics of nostalgia in Jia Zhangke’s films. Throughout Jia’s filmography, the tension between the desire for modernity and the melancholic longing for home plays a predominant role as he documents, though usually in a fictional form, the actualities in China since the age of reform and opening. Unlike the banal romanticizing of a modern world and of western culture on Chinese screen in the 1990s, Jia’s representation of the western influence on China is set apart by two characteristics: Firstly by his localized view. Goods or culture which are directly imported are barely presented in his films. Instead, we notice the abundant use of early Chinese pop music, mostly cover versions and imitations of western pop music, in his early works (Platform), as well as the highly localized visualization of the foreign world in his later works (The World). In this way modernization is mingled with pre-modern features. Secondly the forming of individuality on a personal scale is shown as haunted by the alienated interpersonal relations under the order of capital and labor. Behind the evolution from the “hometown trilogy” to the recent works of Jia, this irreconcilable contradiction serve as the kernel of the frequent symbolic gestures expressing the sensation of loss. As China becomes an organic part of the seductive and dynamic modern world, the naïve fernweh for an abstract place (symbolized by the toponym: Ulan Bator) is finally crystallized into labor export and immigration (Mountains May Depart), which thus contribute to Jia’s poetics of nostalgia.
Qi Ai
University of Nottingham, Year 3 PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies
Be There or Be Square and Cell Phone: Tiaokan, the Formation of Humorous Expression and the Engagement of Popular Culture in Feng Xiaogang’s New Year Celebration Films
"The deepening economic reform in the 1990s pushed the marketisation and commercialisation of the Chinese film industry, while the Party was moving towards hegemonic oversight on China’s cinema, combining propagandistic and commercial goals to consoled its legitimacy in the transitioning time. The connotation of main melody spirits was humanised and the film regulations and according regulatory apparatuses were established. Under such contexts, Feng Xiaogang’s early films with Wang Shuo’s ironic feature were banned, but his scripts for the xiangsheng (crosstalk) and xiaopin (comic sketch) on the CCTV New Year Gala gained the recognition from authority and audience. The scripts represented the style of Feng’s tiaokan (bantering). The humorous style was later used in Feng’s creation of New Year Celebration Films and became the prominent feature of them. My thesis regards these films as the negotiated products of the Chinese film industry, regulatory authority and popular culture. This paper focuses on the engagement of popular culture in Feng’s creation with two case studies, Be There or Be Square (1998) and Cell Phone (2003). It argues that Feng’s humorous approach of tiaokan as the embodiment of the negotiation of the Chinese film industry, regulatory authority and popular culture. His tiaokan maintains the comic form of Wang Shuoeque tiaokan for entertainment but softens its critical edge to accord with the humanising main melody spirits, and later uses dialect and advertising slogan to replace political discourse as the source due to the commercialisation of the Chinese film industry and the changes of regulation authority. “
Bérénice M. Reynaud
University of Lyon 3, IETT, Ph.D student in Chinese studies
Cinematic women’s perspectives on contemporary China and sexuality: a heterogeneous sample of Chinese women’s filmmakers’ works
Cinema is a dynamic that shapes China across time and space. Scholars working on the Chinese cinematic production distinguish several categories like leitmotiv film (zhuxuanlü), entertainment film, art film, and underground film – those categories can of course overlap, articulating both politics and market requirements – and all of them constitute what we call “Chinese cinema” from abroad. In this paper I intend to present a sample of this heterogeneity with the study of three films by women filmmakers: Letter from an unknown woman by Xu Jinglei (2004), Perpetual Motion by Ning Ying (2005), and Lost in Beijing by Li Yu (2007). These three filmmakers all have different backgrounds, and the three movies didn’t face the same conditions of distribution: the first was successful both domestic and abroad, the second was a low-budget and was only released in a few theatres, and the third one was edited multiple times by censorship, before being totally censored one month after its release. Nevertheless, the three of them are known abroad and won prizes in film festivals. Although what is catching our interest here is that the three scripts were written by the filmmakers themselves, and deliver different women’s perspectives on life in China. The question of female sexuality is significant to the narratives, whether it is commodified, romanticized or mocked. Through these case studies we will see how these directors negotiate their own viewpoints within the various dynamics of the Chinese cinematic industry.