China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (Film and Culture Series) - Tapa dura

A quite thought-provoking and extensively researched academic study. Wisconsin Bookwatch Recommended. Choice [China on Screen] will no doubt remain a standard reference for students of cinema studies and is eminently adoptable for the classroom. -- Haiyan Lee Nations & Nationalism An important and exceedingly satisfying read. -- Carolyn M. Bloomer The China Journal It is well worth the read for those interested in learning more about this understudied area of film. -- Antoinette Winstead Film & History Clear and entertaining... This book is as suitable for people just entering the field as for specialized scholars. China Perspectives

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.