China on Screen

Thoroughly engaged with the existing scholarship in their field and unfailingly thoughtful in their responses and questions, Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar offer a wide-ranging account of the mutating links among nation, transnationalism, and Chinese cinematic culture. An eminently readable book, written in the most generous of critical spirit. -- Rey Chow, Brown University

Exploring several hundred years of Chinese cinema, this book considers how movies from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora reflect changing views of the Chinese nation. Giving fresh perspectives on the key movements, themes, and filmmakers in Chinese cinema, it describes and analyzes the films of a variety of directors and actors.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.