Chen Kaige

2012

Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2020

Drawing on the prevailing theoretical paradigm of post-Holocaust research, which defines primarily the post-traumatic subject positions of victim and perpetrator, this paper focuses on the Chinese cinema’s representation of collaboration during the Cultural Revolution (CR). It discusses the issue of betrayal inside the real or symbolic family, which is still unexplored and even overlooked by Chinese cinema research. Furthermore, it analyzes the prolonged and profound identity crisis generated by the CR as presented by twenty-first century blockbuster (e.g. Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home) and independent films (e.g. Wu Wenguang’s 1966: My Time in the Red Guards and Investigating My Father) especially through the figure of the collaborator and the destructive dynamics of betrayal. In these films, the process I term the ‘doubling paradigm,’ and its ‘doubling effect’ enable the spectator to come to terms with the dimensions of pain and loss caused by collaboration, and the ethical repercussions of revolutionary morality. Following an analysis of the four forms of collaboration which emerge from this corpus, this discussion points to the potential contribution of Chinese ‘cinema of betrayal’ to the undertheorized subject position of the collaborator, beyond the Chinese case.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2015

Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 2017

Jiang It is my honour to invite both of you to revisit your memories about the artistic practices during the period of Cultural Revolution. The three of us are currently living in three different places-Sydney, Shanghai and Birminghamof three different time zones; our conversation through email correspondence seems to be a classic one. We may start from your experiences during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), in order to reflect on the most important cultural and visual revolution in the twentieth century of China. As important artists at the time, you had produced well-known artworks during the decade, for example, Li Bin's woodcut print, Rebellion is Justified, Revolution Is No Crime (zaofa youli, geming wuzui) at the beginning of Red Guards movement, and later, Shen Jiawei's painting Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland (Wei women weida de zuguo zhangang) produced in 1974. Both of you were born in the year of 1949, and are those of the same age with the People's Republic of China (PRC). In 1966, you were only 17 years old. What did it mean to you when the revolution took place? Where did it come from and how did it arrive? At that time, nobody knew when exactly would the revolution end. How has that red revolution become a part of our everyday life, changed our perceptions, our language, our behaviours as well as our ways of thinking and those of art and knowledge production? I recall many years ago I have interviewed someone who is also exactly in your age. In his views, the Cultural Revolution was almost like a huge tide, arriving with thunders, covering the entire world, from sky to earth, nothing escapable; he did not have any choice, but to follow the excitements, to go along as the wave took him, without resistance or regrets. His name is Li Xianting. Today is a good day, as our conversation starts on the Christmas Eve. 1 Responding to the topic of this issue, let's see how we can build a 'new world' together.

Asian Cinema , 2018

Wayne Wang (1949–present) occupies a unique position among Chinese American directors working in the United States as he has enjoyed a long and productive career spanning more than 30 years. Unlike most filmmakers, Wang has moved back and forth between independent filmmaking with experimental characteristics and mainstream commercial Hollywood productions. After early success with his pioneering Chinese American film Chan is Missing (Wang, 1982), audiences and film critics were wondering what happened to the ‘independent’ after a string of several commercial Hollywood films during the early 2000s. In 2007 and 2008, Wang returned to independent film production with A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2007) and even formal experimentation in The Princess of Nebraska (2008). Both films benefit from violations of mainstream Hollywood film form in the areas of editing, subtitling, camera, mise-en-scène and narrative. Wang could realize these projects through innovative financing using the strategy of shadow film and pioneering new approaches to distribution by premiering The Princess of Nebraska on YouTube.

Doctoral Dissertation, 2002

In studies of contemporary Chinese. Asian, or world cinema, the Fifth Generation, is a a term that no scholar can afford to miss. The term refers to a group of filmmakers that emerged in 1983 and initiated China's first art film movement. Although the art movement ended around 1988. these filmmakers have remained China's most important cultural figures. Although much has been written about them and their films in English. Chinese and other languages, there was a regrettable absence of a systematic study of the Fifth Generation. This dissertation addresses this absence by focusing on one question: What has the Fifth Generation changed? The dissertation is structured around six concepts in China's critical discourse on the 1980s and 1990s: mass media, literature, nation, history, women, and personal narrative. The author regards literature, nation, and history as the three cornerstones of the Chinese film tradition and examines the Fifth Generation as a group of cultural rebels who have reshaped film's relationship with all three concepts. Case studies offer new understandings of Postcolonialism, nationalism, and Orientalism, along with the theoretical discussion. The limitation of the generation's revolution is examined through its representation of women through engendered perspectives. The compromises of the Fifth Generation are reflected through an introduction of the Sixth Generation as a more radical group of rebels who took nearly a decade to surface from the underground. We may glimpse new trends in Chinese and world cinema from the personal narratives of urban stories narrated by these younger filmmakers. In addition to textual analyses of film works by some rarely discussed directors, including Wu Ziniu. Li Shaohong. Feng Xiaoning. Ye Daying. and Yang Liping. the dissertation also offers concise historical reviews of how the Fifth Generation emerged, how the film concept has been developed, how nationalism has been perceived, and how different generations of directors have presented women in China. The dissertation reveals how Chinese filmmakers must constantly negotiate with the market, censorship, and the West by locating the Fifth Generation in the “big picture" of contemporary Chinese film culture and mass media.

Film International, 2004

The 'privatization' of art is a necessary part of the peaceful aftermath of the Stalinist campaigns of centralization, but this does not mean a resurgence of individualism. Rather, it is a sign of the permanent assimilation of the individual. The post-Stalinist artist is a model of the new individual. The state points to him to illustrate how expertise and talent must be utilized.

Edited by Marco Dalla Gassa, Corrado Neri and Federico Zecca, 2018

This special issue of Cinéma&Cie explores the cultural dynamics, ideological aporias and political struggles that characterize the relationship between Maoism and national cinemas, from the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution to the present day. All the articles included in the special issue highlight the complexity of the process of translation and ‘reinvention’ of Maoism in different cultural contexts, focusing on subjects and historical episodes that have been suppressed in public debates and in traditional film history books.

The China Journal, 2020