Wang Bing's Filmmaking of the China Dream PDF Download

Author: Elena Pollacchi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789463721837
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This volume offers an organic discussion of Wang Bing's filmmaking across China's marginal spaces and against the backdrop of the state-sanctioned 'China Dream'. Wang's work has contemporary China as its focus and testifies to the country's contradictions, not dissimilar to those of contemporary societies dealing with issues of inequality, labour, and migration. Without being an activist, Wang Bing gives voice to the subaltern. His internationally awarded documentaries are recognized as world masterpieces. His unique aesthetics bears references to film masters, therefore this investigation goes beyond the divide between Western and non-Western film traditions. Each chapter takes a different articulation of space (spaces of labour, spaces of history, spaces of memory) as its entry point bringing together film and documentary studies, Chinese studies, and studies in globalization issues. This volume benefits from the author's extensive conversation with Wang Bing and from insider's observations of film production and the film festival circuit.

Author: Bruno Lessard
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888805770
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Having made documentary films screened at the most prestigious film festivals in the West, Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing presents a unique case of independent filmmaking. In The Cinema of Wang Bing, Bruno Lessard examines the documentarian’s most important films, focusing on the two obsessions at the heart of his oeuvre—the legacy of Maoist China in the present and the transformation of labor since China’s entry into the market economy—and how the crucial figures of survivor and worker are represented on screen. Bruno Lessard argues that Wang Bing is a minjian (grassroots) intellectual whose films document the impact of Mao’s Great Leap Forward on Chinese collective memory and register the repercussions of China’s turn to neoliberalism on workers in the post-Reform era. Bringing together Chinese documentary studies and China studies, the author shows how Wang Bing’s practice reflects the minjian ethos when documenting the survivors of the Great Famine and those who have not benefitted from China’s neoliberal policies—from laid-off workers to migrant workers. The films discussed include some of Wang Bing’s most celebrated works such as West of the Tracks and Dead Souls, as well as neglected documentaries such as Coal Money and Bitter Money. “Bruno Lessard analyzes Wang Bing’s documentary masterpieces through the twin lens of history and labor. Incisively framing them as a sustained critical intervention in how China understands itself through the legacy of Maoism and Deng Xiaoping’s neoliberal reform project, The Cinema of Wang Bing makes me want to watch the films again.” —Chris Berry, King’s College London “Professor Lessard offers an original and comprehensive study of Wang Bing’s contribution to Chinese documentary as a mode of observation and reflection on some of the most crucial periods of China’s recent and present history . . . I certainly felt that reading the films through a sociohistorical approach produced a more vibrant understanding of Wang Bing’s oeuvre.” —Cecília Mello, University of São Paulo

Author: Schwartz GRUNDMANN
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789463722421
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The book both extends and reflects upon a large-scale, international art project that has taken the form of an online database and numerous exhibitions (including the Venice Biennale and other important venues). The essays explore the social, political, and ethical ramifications of documenting global labour with a roving camera that often operates in close proximity to its human subjects. The inclusion of Antje Ehmann's journal entries, translated for the first time into English, will offer a real-time account of the workshops that will complement the scholarly essays' accounts of the videos.

Author: Julia Vassilieva
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789463728706
Category : Experimental films
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the wake of the explosion in the production of essay films over the last 25 years and its subsequent theorization in scholarly literature, this volume seeks to historicize these intertwined developments within the 'long durée' of the 20th century and into the 21st. By raising the issue of 'beyond the essay film', this collection seeks not only to acknowledge the influential predecessors of this -- in the view of many critics, the most interesting type of contemporary filmmaking -- but also to speculate about its possible transformation as we move forward into the uncharted waters of the 21st -- digital -- century. Beyond the Essay Film focusses on three specific axes that underpin and shape the articulation of the essay film as a specific cultural form -- subjectivity, textuality, and technology -- to explore how changes along and across these dimensions affect historical shifts within the essay-film practice and its relation to other types of cinema and neighbouring art forms.

Author: Chris Berry
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888028510
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement is a groundbreaking project unveiling recent documentary film work that has transformed visual culture in China, and brought new immediacy along with a broader base of participation to Chinese media. As a foundational text, this volume provides a much-needed introduction to the topic of Chinese documentary film, the signature mode of contemporary Chinese visual culture. These essays examine how documentary filmmakers have opened up a unique new space of social commentary and critique in an era of rapid social changes amid globalization and marketization. The essays cover topics ranging from cruelty in documentary to the representation of Beijing; gay, lesbian and queer documentary; sound in documentary; the exhibition context in China; authorial intervention and subjectivity; and the distinctive "on the spot" aesthetics of contemporary Chinese documentary. This volume will be critical reading for scholars in disciplines ranging from film and media studies to Chinese studies and Asian studies.

Author: Wu Cheng'en
Publisher: Asiapac Books Pte Ltd
ISBN: 9812298894
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
The bestselling Journey to the West comic book by artist Chang Boon Kiat is now back in a brand new fully coloured edition. Journey to the West is one of the greatest classics in Chinese literature. It tells the epic tale of the monk Xuanzang who journeys to the West in search of the Buddhist sutras with his disciples, Sun Wukong, Sandy and Pigsy. Along the way, Xuanzang's life was threatened by the diabolical White Bone Spirit, the menacing Red Child and his fearsome parents and, a host of evil spirits who sought to devour Xuanzang's flesh to attain immortality. Bear witness to the formidable Sun Wukong's (Monkey God) prowess as he takes them on, using his Fiery Eyes, Golden Cudgel, Somersault Cloud, and quick wits! Be prepared for a galloping read that will leave you breathless!

Author: Patricia Aufderheide
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199720398
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Documentary film can encompass anything from Robert Flaherty's pioneering ethnography Nanook of the North to Michael Moore's anti-Iraq War polemic Fahrenheit 9/11, from Dziga Vertov's artful Soviet propaganda piece Man with a Movie Camera to Luc Jacquet's heart-tugging wildlife epic March of the Penguins. In this concise, crisply written guide, Patricia Aufderheide takes readers along the diverse paths of documentary history and charts the lively, often fierce debates among filmmakers and scholars about the best ways to represent reality and to tell the truths worth telling. Beginning with an overview of the central issues of documentary filmmaking--its definitions and purposes, its forms and founders--Aufderheide focuses on several of its key subgenres, including public affairs films, government propaganda (particularly the works produced during World War II), historical documentaries, and nature films. Her thematic approach allows readers to enter the subject matter through the kinds of films that first attracted them to documentaries, and it permits her to make connections between eras, as well as revealing the ongoing nature of documentary's core controversies involving objectivity, advocacy, and bias. Interwoven throughout are discussions of the ethical and practical considerations that arise with every aspect of documentary production. A particularly useful feature of the book is an appended list of "100 great documentaries" that anyone with a serious interest in the genre should see. Drawing on the author's four decades of experience as a film scholar and critic, this book is the perfect introduction not just for teachers and students but also for all thoughtful filmgoers and for those who aspire to make documentaries themselves. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Author: L. Robinson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137271221
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
The rise of independent documentary film production is the most radical development in the contemporary Chinese mediascape. This book is a sustained examination of Chinese independent documentary in relation to one of its central principles: xianchang, or being 'on the scene'.

Author: Kevin Pollpeter
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781508792871
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
China's position in the world has been evolving. It seeks increased influence and independence from foreign powers with the ultimate goal of preserving China's sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and political system. Over the long term, China seeks to transform the international system to better suit its interests, but seeks to integrate itself into the existing international system over the short term with the goal of reshaping the Asia-Pacific political environment into one in which its interests must be given greater attention. China's pursuit of space power is intended to support this strategy. China views the development of space power as a necessary move for a country that wants to strengthen its national power. Indeed, China's goal is to become a space power on par with the United States and to foster a space industry that is the equal of those in the United States, Europe, and Russia. China takes a comprehensive, long-term approach to this goal that emphasizes the accrual of the military, economic, and political benefits space can provide.

Author: Xinyuan Wang
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 191063462X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Life outside the mobile phone is unbearable.’ Lily, 19, factory worker. Described as the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Xinyuan Wang spent 15 months living among a community of these migrants in a small factory town in southeast China to track their use of social media. It was here she witnessed a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise ‘homeless’. Wang’s fascinating study explores the full range of preconceptions commonly held about Chinese people – their relationship with education, with family, with politics, with ‘home’ – and argues why, for this vast population, it is time to reassess what we think we know about contemporary China and the evolving role of social media.