|
|
Room: Hagerty Hall 359
Time: Th/Fr 1:30-4:30
Instructor: Kirk A. Denton / 375 Hagerty Hall / 292-5548 (Office)
E-mail: denton.2@osu.edu
Course web-page: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/denton2/courses/c879/f879.htm
Office hours: T: 1:30-3:30
Course DescriptionThis course is an introduction for graduate students to the history and development of Chinese film, with primary focus on the film of the mainland/PRC. The first part of the course, in rough chronological order, treats the early history of Chinese film, from the leftist melodrama of the 1930s and various attempts by filmmakers to negotiate with the demands of that politicized film to postrevolutionary film of the "first seventeen years" and the Cultural Revolution. When we arrive at the post-Mao period, the course turns less historical and more oriented toward theme and genre. We spend a week each on melodrama, Fifth Generation film, filmic representations of women, women's films, minority films, and recent "post-socialist" film. Students view two representative films each week. These films will be discussed in class in conjunction with secondary critical articles.
Film ViewingsAll films will be placed on reserve in Hagerty Hall or the Center for Teaching Excellence, Instructional Media Center (Lord Hall 11).
RequirementsAs a seminar, much emphasis will be placed on class oral participation (10%). Additionally, students will do the following assignments:
- one oral presentation on a secondary study (20%): student briefly presents a description of of the content of the article, then offers an analytical evaluation of its perspective (methodology and theoretical apparatus) and contribution to the field (maximum 10 mins)
- an oral "reading" of a film (20%): student offers a personal interpretation of the film; this should not be a retelling of the plot of the film, but an analysis of important themes and issues the film raises (maximum 15 mins)
- research paper on some aspect of Chinese film (which can be a development of the above oral "reading" (50%)
Texts
- Bordwell, David. Film Art: An Introduction. NY: Knopf, 1986 [use most recent edition]
- Zhang Yingjin. Chinese National Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004. Can be purchase in pdf format from: Ebooks.com.
ScheduleWeek One: Introduction/ Film Language
Readings: Bordwell, Film Art: An Introduction (Parts II-III) [see also Film Terms; Yale Film Studies Film Analsis]
Week Two: Early Leftist Melodrama
Viewings: Shennu (Goddess; 1934); Malu tianshi (Street Angels; 1937)
Readings: Ma Ning 1989; Zhang Yingjin 2003: 1-112; Rothman 1993Week Three: Negotiating with the Leftist Tradition
Viewings: Yeban gesheng (Song at midnight; 1937); Xiaocheng zhi chun (Spring in a small town; 1948) [Click here for English translation of script]
Readings: Braester 2000; Zhang Yingjing 2003: 58-112Week Four: Postrevolutionary Film: First Seventeen Years
Viewings: Li Shuangshuang (1962); Juelie (Breaking with Old Ideas; 1975)
Readings: Berry 1991: 30-39; Zhang Yingjin 2003: 189-229Week Five: Post-Mao Melodrama and the New Ethics
Viewings: Tianyun shan chuanqi (The Legend of Tianyun Mountain, 1980); Yangguang canlan de rizi (In the Heat of the Sun; 1994)
Readings: Zhang Yingjin 2003: 225-258; Browne 1994: 15-56; Kaplan 1993; Pickowicz 1993Week Six: Fifth Generation and Cultural Critique
Viewings: Huang tudi (Yellow Earth, 1984); Yige he bage (One and Eight, 1984)
Readings: Clark 1989; Yau 1991: 62-80; Chow 1995: 79-107.Week Seven: Cultural Critique and the Representation of Women
Viewings: Hong gaoliang (Red Sorghum, 1987); Dahong denglong gaogao gua (Raise the Red Lantern, 1992)
Readings: Yau 1989a; Wang Yuejin 1991: 80-103; Chow 1995: 79-107Week Eight: Women's Film
Viewings: Ren, gui, qing (Human, demon, love); Nuren de gushi (Women's story, 1987) [or Hongfen (Rouge, 1994), Lian'ai zhong de Baobei (Baober in Love, 2004)]
Readings: Berry 1988a; Kaplan 1991: 141-54; Dai Jinhua 1995; Dai Jinhua 1993: 218-31Week Nine: Minority Films and Han Uses of Primitive Other
Viewings: Dao ma zei (Horse thief, 1986); Qingchun ji (Sacrificed youth, 1985) [or A Mongolian Tale (1997)]
Readings: Clark, 1987; Yau 1989bWeek Ten: Market Reforms, Globalization, and Identity
Viewings: Platform (2000; dir. Jia Zhangke); Blind Shaft (2003; dir. Li Yang).
Readings: Zhang 2003: 259-296Seminar Bibliography (See also MCLC Resource Center (Media)
(Materials marked * can all be found in the DEALL Graduate Reading Room).
Bergeron, Regis. 1977. Le cinema chinois, 1905-1949. Laussane: Alfred Eibel.
*Berry, Chris. 1988a. "Chinese Women's Cinema." Camera Obscura 18: 5-19.
-----. 1988b. "Chinese Urban Cinema: Hyper-realism Versus Absurdism." East West Film Journal 3, no. 1: 76-87.
----- , ed. 1991. Perspectives on Chinese Cinema. British Film Institute.
-----. "The Sublimative Text: Sex and Revolution in Big Road [The Highway]." East-West Film Journal 2, 2 (June 1988): 66-86.
Bordwell, David. 1991. Film Art: An Introduction. NY: Knopf.*Braester, Yomi. 2000. "Revolution and Revulsion: Ideology, Monstrosity, and Phantasmagoria in Ma-Xu Weibang's Film Song at Midnight." Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 12, no. 1 (Spring): 81-114.
Browne, Nick, et.al. 1994. New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. Cambridge UP.
Callahan, W. A. 1993. "Gender, Ideology, Nation: Ju Dou in the Cultural Politics of China." East-West Film Journal 7.1 (January 1993):52-80.
Cheng Jihua. Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi (The history of the development of Chinese film) 2 vols. Beijing: Zhongguo dianying, 1980.
Chow, Rey. 1995. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema. NY: Columbia UP.Chow, Rey. 1996. "We Endure, Therefore We Are: Survival, Governance, and Zhang Yimou's To Live." South Atlantic Quarterly 95, 4 (Fall): 1039-64.
Clark, Paul. 1987a. Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949. Cambridge UP.
*-----. 1987b. "Ethnic Minorities in Chinese Films." East West Film Journal 1.2.
*-----. 1989. "Reinventing China: The Fifth Generation Filmmakers." Modern Chinese Literature (1989) V:121-36
Dai Jinhua. 1993. Dianying lilun yu piping shouce (A handbook of film theory and criticism). Beijing: Kexue jishu wenxian.
-----. 1995. "Invisible Women: Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Women's Film." Positions 3.1 (1995):254-80.
*-----. 1995. Jingcheng tuwei: Nuxing, dianying, wenxue (Breaking through the mirrored city: women, film, and literature). Beijing: Zuojia.
Dissanayake, Wimal.1988. Cinema and Cultural Identity: Reflections on Films from Japan, India, and China. Lanham: UP of America.
-----. 1993. Melodrama and Asian Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
-----. 1994. Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP.Donald, Stephanie. 2000. Public Secrets, Public Spaces: Cinema and Civility in China. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield.
Erlich, Linda and David Desser, ed. 1994. Cinematic Landscapes: Observations on the Visual Arts and Cinema of China and Japan. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Huashuo "Huang tudi" (Speaking of Yellow Earth). Beijing: Zhongguo dianying, 1986.
*Kaplan, Ann.1991. "Problematising Cross-Cultural Analysis: The Case of Women in the Recent Chinese Film," in Berry 1991:141-54
*-----. 1993. "Melodrama / subjectivity / ideology: Western melodrama theories and their relevance to recent Chinese films." In Dissanayake 1993: 9-28.Kuoshu, Harry H. 1999. Lightness of Being in China: Adaptation and Discursive Figuration in Cinema and Theater. New York: Peter Lang.
Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. 1991. "Ju Dou--A Hermeneitical Reading of Cross-cultural Cinema." Film Quarterly 45.2 (Winter 1991-92): 2-10.*Lee, Leo Ou-fan. 1991. "The Tradition of Modern Chinese Cinema:: Some Preliminary Explorations and Hypotheses." In Berry 1991: 6-20.
Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng. 1997a. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
-----. 1997b. "National Cinema, Cultural Critique, Transnational Capital: The Films of Zhang Yimou." In Lu 1997a: 105-36.
*Ma Ning. 1987. "Satisfied or Not: Desire and Discourse in the Chinese Comedy of the 1960s." East-West Film Journal 2.1 (Dec. 1987): 32-49.
*-----. 1989. "The Textual and Critical Difference of Being Radical." Wide Angle 11.2:22-31
*-----. 1993. "Symbolic Representations and Symbolic Violence: Chinese Family Melodramas of the Early 1980s." In Dissanayake 1993: 29-58.
Pickowicz, Paul. 1991. "The Theme of Spiritual Pollution in Chinese Films of the 1930s." Modern China 17.1 (Jan. 1991): 38-74.
*-----. 1993. "Melodrama Representations and the May Fourth Tradition of Chinese Cinema." In Ellen Widmer, et. al, eds. From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China. New York: Columbia University Press. 295-326.-----. 1994. "Huang Jianxin and the Notion of Postsocialism." In Browne 1994: 57-87.
-----. 1995. "Velvet Prisons and the Political Economy of Chinese Filmmaking." In Deborah Davis, et al, eds. Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China. Cambridge: U. of Cambridge Press.
Quiquemelle, Mari-Claire, ed. Le Cinema Chinois. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985.
Rayns, Tony. "Chinese Vocabulary: An Introduction to King of Children and the New Chinese Cinema."
*Rothman, William 1993. "The Goddess: Reflections on Melodrama East and West." In Dissanayake 1993: 59-72.
Semsel, George, ed. 1987. Chinese Film: The State of the Art in the People's Republic. Praeger.
-----, ed. 1990. Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era. Praeger.
-----, ed. 1993. Film in Contemporary China: Critical Debates, 1979-89. Praeger.Silbergeld, Jerome. 1999. China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema. London: Reaktion, 1999.
*Wang Yuejin. 1991. "Red Sorghum: Mixing Memory and Desire." In Berry 1991: 80-103.
*Yau, Esther. 1989a. "Cultural and Economic Dislocations: Filmic Fantasies of Chinese Women of the 1980s." Wide Angle 11.2: 6-21
*-----. 1989b. "Is China the End of Hermeneutics? Or Political and Cultural Usage of Non-Han Women in Mainlan Chinese Films." Discourse 11.2 (1989):115-36.
*-----. 1991. "Yellow Earth: Western Analysis and a Non-western Text" in Berry 1991: 62-8.Zhang, Yingjin. 1999. Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943. Stanford: Stanford UP.
-----. 2003. Chinese National Cinema. New York: Routledge.
Zhang, Yingjin and Zhiwei Xiao, eds. 2000. Encylopedia of Chinese Film. NY and London: Routledge.