This Spring I will teach together with Rowan Parry a seminar on Chinese cinemas at the Beijing Film academy. Please find registration details and the like on the poster. The programme and the reading is as follows:
Questioning Chinese Cinemas – In Search for New Perspectives
Convenor: Jeroen de Kloet (University of Amsterdam / Beijing Film Academy – b.j.dekloet@uva.nl)
Coordinator: Rowan Parry (University of Amsterdam, r.e.parry@uva.nl)
Open to: Students and faculty
Language: English
What challenges does Chinese cinema face today, and what is the meaning and use of this prefix “Chinese”? This seminar consists of five sessions in which we will discuss issues that haunt contemporary (Chinese) film studies, namely: Chineseness and its Others, urbanisation, gender and sexuality, realism and subjectivity, and slowness. We will engage with these issues by reading two key texts per session, as well as (re)viewing a selection of film clips. Participants will be asked to bring clips they think are relevant for the specific theme addressed. In the end, we hope to produce texts and eventually short movies or related visual works that can be published on the website of the ChinaCreative project.
Session 1: Chineseness and its Others
Date: Thursday March 24
Venue: BFA – Room
Time: 14.00-17.00
Reading:
Lim, Song Hwee (2011). “Six Chinese Cinema’s In Search of a Historiography.” In: Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward (eds.), The Chinese Cinema Book. London, BFI: 35-43.
Shih, Shu-mei (2011). “The Concept of the Sinophone.” PMLAI, 126.3: 709-718.
Session 2: Urbanisation
Date: Thursday April 21
Venue: BFA – Room
Time: 14.00-17.00
Reading:
Braester, Yomi (2012). “From Urban Films to Urban Cinema.” In: Yinjing Zhang (ed.), A Companion to Chinese Cinema. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK: chapter 18.
Chow, Yiu Fai and Jeroen de Kloet (2013). “Flânerie and Acrophilia in the Postmetropolis – Rooftops in Hong Kong Cinema.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 7.2: 139-155.
Session 3: Realism and Subjectivity
Date: Thursday May 12
Venue: BFA – Room
Time: 14.00-17.00
Reading:
Deppman, Hsiu-Chuang (2014). “Reading docufiction: Jia Zhangke’s 24 City.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 8.3: 188-208.
Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk (2014). ”The poetics of the real in Jia Zhanke’s 24 City.” Screen 55.2: 267-275.
Session 4: Gender and sexuality
Date: Thursday May 26
Venue: BFA – Room
Time: 14.00-17.00
Reading:
Chow, Rey (2007). “Woman, fetish, particularism: Articulating Chinese cinema with a cross-cultural problematic.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas. 1.3: 209-221.
Chow, Yiu Fai (2008). “Martial Arts Films and Dutch–Chinese Masculinities, Smaller Is Better.” China Information, 22.2: 331-359
Session 5: Slowness
Date: Thursday June 9
Venue: BFA – Room
Time: 14.00-17.00
Reading:
Lim, Song Hwee (2014). Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press: Chapter 1.
Wood, Chris (2007). “Realism, intertextuality and humour in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas. 1.2: 105-116.