Urban Generation

Zhang Zhen

Description

Since the early 1990s, while mainland China's state-owned movie studios have struggled with financial and ideological constraints, an exciting alternative cinema has developed. Dubbed the "Urban Generation," this new cinema is driven by young filmmakers who emerged in the shadow of the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. What unites diverse directors under the "Urban Generation" rubric is their creative engagement with the wrenching economic and social transformations underway in China. Urban Generation filmmakers are vanguard interpreters of the confusion and anxiety triggered by the massive urbanization of contemporary China. This collection brings together some of the most recent original research on this emerging cinema and its relationship to Chinese society.The contributors analyze the historical and social conditions that gave rise to the Urban Generation, its aesthetic innovation, and its ambivalent relationship to China's mainstream film industry and the international film market. Focusing attention on the Urban Generation's sense of social urgency, its documentary impulses, and its representations of gender and sexuality, the contributors highlight the characters who populate this new urban cinema-ordinary and marginalized city dwellers including aimless bohemians, petty thieves, prostitutes, postal workers, taxi drivers, migrant workers-and the fact that these "floating urban subjects" are often portrayed by non-professional actors. Some essays concentrate on specific films (such as Shower and Suzhou River) or filmmakers (including Jia Zhangke and Zhang Yuan), while others survey broader concerns. Together the thirteen essays in this collection give a multifaceted account of a significant, ongoing cinematic and cultural phenomenon.Contributors. Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, Shuqin Cui, Linda Chiu-han Lai, Charles Leary, Sheldon H. Lu, Jason McGrath, Augusta Palmer, Berenice Reynaud, Yaohua Shi, Yingjin Zhang, Zhang Zhen, Xueping Zhong

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• China
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 28 mars 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822390008
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

t h e u r b a n g e n e r a t i o n

t h e u r b a n g e n e r a t i o n

Chinese Cinema and Society at the

Turn of the Twenty-first Century

z h a n g z h e n , e d i t o r

duke university press ∞ durham and london 2007

∫2007 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States

of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Katy Clove

Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Frontispiece:Lunar Eclipse:The problem of vision and telepathic pain. Courtesy of Wang Quan’an. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For Loke and his generation

c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments ........................................................................................... ix

Introduction: Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘‘Transformation’’ (Zhuanxing)∞zhang zhen ......................................................................... 1

I

∞

IDEOLOGY, FILM PRACTICE, AND THE MARKET

Rebel without a Cause? China’s New Urban Generation and Postsocialist Filmmaking∞yingjin zhang................................................................... 49

The Independent Cinema of Jia Zhangke: From Postsocialist Realism to a Transnational Aesthetic∞jason mcgrath ....................................................................... 81

Getting Real: Chinese Documentary, Chinese Postsocialism∞chris berry....................................................... 115

II

∞

THE POLITICSAND POETICSOF URBAN SPACE

Tear down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Contemporary Chinese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art∞sheldon h. lu ..................................... 137

Tracing the City’s Scars: Demolition and the Limits of the Documentary Impulse in the New Urban Cinema∞yomi braester .......................................... 161

Scaling the Skyscraper: Images of Cosmopolitan Consumption inStreet Angel(1937) andBeautiful New World(1998)∞augusta palmer...................................................... 181

Whither the Walker Goes: Spatial Practices and Negative Poetics in 1990s Chinese Urban Cinema∞linda chiu-han lai .................................................. 205

III

∞

THE PRODUCTION OF DESIRE AND IDENTITIES

Ning Ying’s Beijing Trilogy: Cinematic Configurations of Age, Class, and Sexuality∞shuqin cui241 .............................................................................

Zhang Yuan’s Imaginary Cities and the Theatricalization of the Chinese ‘‘Bastards’’∞bérénice reynaud ............................................................ 264

Mr. Zhao On and O√ the Screen: Male Desire and Its Discontent∞xueping zhong................................. 295

Maintaining Law and Order in the City: New Tales of the People’s Police∞yaohua shi.................................................................................. 316

Urban Dreamscape, Phantom Sisters, and the Identity of an Emergent Art Cinema∞zhang zhen............................................................................. 344

Appendix. The Urban Generation Filmmakers (compiled by Charles Leary) ........................................................................ 389

Bibliography ................................................................................................... 411

Contributors ................................................................................................. 429

Index .............................................................................................................. 431

Acknowledgments

The initial work for this volume began in the spring of 2001, with a touring film program I co-organized with Zhijie Jia, as well as an accompanying symposium at New York University. I am grateful to the four filmmakers, in particular Ning Ying and Wang Quan’an, who actively took part in the sym- posium. Robert Sklar and Rebecca Karl, both of NYU, and Richard Peña of Columbia University, graciously served as panel moderators. Richard was also instrumental, in his capacity as the program director of the Film Society at Lincoln Center, in helping us get the ‘‘Urban Generation’’ on the calendar of the Walter Reade Theater. Tom Bender, Director of the International Center for Advanced Studies at NYU, provided crucial support for the symposium, recognizing the relevance of the symposium to the center’s comparative proj- ect on Cities and Urban Knowledges. Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts, and Chris Straayer, Chair of the Department of Cinema Studies, gave me much needed moral and financial support. Thanks are also due to NYU’s programs in Asia Pacific Studies and East Asian Studies and its Humanities Council, as well as the Asian Cultural Council, the China Institute and New York Women and Film, for their support. Among many other individuals at NYU whose contributions were indispensable for the project as a whole, Shi-yan Chao, Xiangyang Chen, Lucas Hilderbrand, Mai Kiang, Charles Leary, Jeryl Martin-Hannibal, and Augusta Palmer deserve special mention. I am also grateful to Chris Berry, Adam Chau, Yoshikuni Igarashi, Tom Gunning, Miriam Hansen, and Wu Hung for providing me with additional venues for discussing the project and constructive comments, and to Harry Harootunian for bringing the volume to Duke University Press. I appreciate much the editorial assistance from Reynolds Smith and Sharon Torian at Duke, who cheered me on along the way. With unwavering enthusi-