Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture: Envisioning the Nation

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Honourable Mention, Best Monograph Award, BAFTSS Publication Awards 2022 Sheldon Lu's wide-ranging new book investigates how filmmakers and visual artists from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have envisioned China as it transitions from a socialist to a globalized capitalist state. It examines how the modern nation has been refashioned and re-imagined in order to keep pace with globalization and transnationalism. At the heart of Lus analysis is a double movement in the relationship between nation and transnationalism in the Chinese post-socialist state. He considers the complexity of how the Chinese economy is integrated in the global capitalist system while also remaining a repressive body politic with mechanisms of control and surveillance. He explores the interrelations of the local, the national, the subnational, and the global as China repositions itself in the world. Lu considers examples from feature and documentary film, mainstream and marginal cinema, and a variety of visual arts: photography, painting, digital video, architecture, and installation. His close case studies include representations of class, masculinity and sexuality in contemporary Taiwanese and Chinese cinema; the figure of the sex worker as a symbol of modernity and mobility; and artists' representations of Beijing at the time of the 2008 Olympics.

Reviews

Sheldon Lu has contributed significantly to the study of Chinese language cinema, literature, and visual arts over the years, and initiated important concepts such as transnational cinema which has become an indispensable framework for scholars and students to look at Chinese cinema, world cinemas, and visual culture. His latest book covers a broad array of visual and artistic medium: film, painting, graffiti, photography, architecture, installation, performance and poetry. It is illustrated with photographs of artworks and stills from films which contribute to the understanding of the text. This book brings the subject matter alive and up to date, revealing the diversity and vibrancy of Chinese aesthetic culture for readers. -- Stephen Teo, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
A timely intervention in academic debates and visual productions that challenges the reader to rethink familiar concepts (e.g., nation, masculinity, environment) and reconfigure relationships between cinema and other arts. A must-read for those interested in the expert judgment of a leading voice in the field. -- Yingjin Zhang, University of California, San Diego, USA
In a world ravaged by pandemics, ecological degradation, sexual violence, racial assaults, territorial disputes, and trade wars, Sheldon Lus book makes a critical intervention into ongoing debates about China by focusing on the notion of the nation in cinema and related visual arts. Absolutely essential reading. -- Gina Marchetti, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
As the originator of the transnational concept, Sheldon Lu is the most able scholar to probe the vagaries of national cinema in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. We tend to think of globalisation and nationalism as antithetical forces, but Lu presents case after case of how nationalism is aided and abetted by globalisation and transnationalism. Chinas film and visual culture carry the aims of patriotic ideologues, but also present visions of individual struggles against repression, inequality and patriarchy. Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture is an incisive, expansive intervention into Chinas global figurations. -- Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Author Bio

Sheldon Lu is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at UC Davis, USA. He is the author and editor of more than a dozen books in English and Chinese. These include Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in Literature and Visual Culture (2007), China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (2001), and From Historicity to Fictionality: The Chinese Poetics of Narrative (1994). Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (co-edited with Emilie Y. Y. Yeh, 2005) was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.