Lin Feng

University of Hull, School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, Faculty Member

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Books by Lin Feng

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond

by Lin Feng and James Aston

This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema wit... more This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema within the transnational context. It addresses several urgent and pertinent issues such as the distribution and exhibition practices of East Asian genre films, intra-regional creative flow of screen culture, and genre’s creative response to censorship. The volume expands the scholarly discussion of the rich heritage and fast-changing landscape of filmmaking in East Asian cinemas. Confronting the complex interaction between genres, filmic narrative and aesthetics, film history and politics, and cross-cultural translation, this book not only reevaluates genre’s role in film production, distribution, and consumption, but also tackles several under-explored areas in film studies and transnational cinema, such as the history of East Asian commercial cinema, the East Asian film industry, and cross-media and cross-market film dissemination.

Contents
Introduction (James Aston and Lin Feng)

Part I: East Asian Film Genre in a Transnational Age (James Aston)
1. Rapidly Shifting Landscapes: Two Case Studies in the UK Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese Language Films in the 21st Century (Fraser Elliott and Andy Willis)

2. East Asian Noir: Transnational Film Noir in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong (Caleb Kelso-Marsh)

3. The Wolf is Coming: Genre hybridity in the contemporary Chinese Blockbuster (James Aston)

Part II: Development of Genre film and Film Genre in East Asia Cinemas (James Aston)
4. Fantasy, Vampirism, and Genre/Gender Wars on the Chinese Screen of the Roaring 1920s (Shaoyi Sun)

5. Premodern History and the Contemporary South Korean Period Blockbuster (Louisa Mitchell)

6. Chinese Censorship, Genre Mediation and the Puzzle Films of Leste Chen (Gary Bettinson)

Part III: The Politics of Genre Space (Lin Feng)
7. Critiquing New Generational Japanese Horror: “Youthful Fatalisms, Old Aesthetics” (Dave McCaig and Rachel Elizabeth Barraclough)

8. Genre and Censorship: The Crime Film in Late Colonial Hong Kong (Kistof Van den Troost)

9. Old Shanghai and Film Noir Crossover (Lin Feng)

Notes on Contributors

Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom

As one of the most popular and versatile Hong Kong film stars, Chow Yun-fat has enjoyed internati... more As one of the most popular and versatile Hong Kong film stars, Chow Yun-fat has enjoyed international success over the last four decades. Using Chow’s transnational and trans-regional star persona as a case study, Lin Feng investigates stardom as an agent for mediating the sociocultural construction of Hong Kong and Chinese identities. Through the analysis of Chow’s on- and off-screen star image, the book recognises that a star’s image is unstable and fragmented across distinct historical junctures, geographic borders and media platforms. Following Chow’s career move from Hong Kong to Hollywood, and then to transnational Chinese cinema, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom highlights the complex redefinitions of local and global, traditional and modern, and East and West, that Chow’s image has undergone, exploring the nature of Chinese and transnational stardom, the East Asian film industry, and Asian male stardom beyond martial arts and action cinema.

peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters by Lin Feng

The Sound of Chinese Urban Cinema: Multilingualism and the Re-globalization of Shanghai in the 1990s

Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization, 2022

Old Shanghai and Film Noir Cross Over

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, 2020

Despite the ongoing debate on whether film noir is a distinct film genre and the questioning of t... more Despite the ongoing debate on whether film noir is a distinct film genre and the questioning of the genre determinants of noir films, it is now widely acknowledged among scholars that film noir and noir films should be understood beyond its original context of Hollywood. This chapter follows the transnational development of film noir and examines noir film’s local expression and global reach through the Shanghai heibang films. The chapter questions why Shanghai, especially Old Shanghai, is chosen by Chinese filmmakers as an imaginative space to question China’s modernity and how genre conventions are adopted and adapted to shift Shanghai’s urban imagery from a sin city to a noir city since the 1990s.

Online video sharing: an alternative channel for film distribution? Copyright enforcement, censorship, and Chinese independent cinema

Regarding piracy as the crime of stealing copyright holders’ rightful profits, many creative indu... more Regarding piracy as the crime of stealing copyright holders’ rightful profits, many creative industries, such as the film, music, and gaming industries, are battling for stricter administrative and legal enforcement against copyright infringement. However, there is a counterargument that piracy could benefit copyright holders in the form of free promotion. Given China’s strict censorship of film content, this paper investigates how online piracy complicates the distribution of independent films in China. The advance of cyber technology and high-speed Internet access has not only fueled the spread of online film sharing, but has also encouraged public participation in the debate on the complex relationship between piracy, copyright, and censorship. Taking Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin (2013) as a case study, this paper evaluates the alternative business models for Chinese independent cinema put forward by Chinese netizens.

‘I’m ugly, but gentle’: performing ‘little character’ in post-Mao Chinese comedies

Stars are often associated with glamour and beauty, but in this paper I would like to question ho... more Stars are often associated with glamour and beauty, but in this paper I would like to question how the concept of “chou” (literally meaning ugliness) is embraced in contemporary Chinese cinema. The popularity of chouxing (ugly star) in the Chinese cinema since the late 1980s has challenged the star system in Chinese film industry during the previous decades when a male actor’s handsome appearance was regarded as an important criterion for him being cast as a leading man. Directing the public attention to a male star’s physical appearance by stressing the attributive adjective chou, this newly-coined word raises a question: how the cinematic emphasis on a male star’s physical appearance engages with the social construction of a star’s screen charisma under the transnational context? To answer the question, this paper takes Ge You (b.1957) as a case study and explores the star’s impersonation of xiao renwu (little character) in Chinese comedies. I argue that the Chinese cinema’s emphasis of a chouxing’s physical appearance is a visual manifest of the character’s imperfectness and ordinariness. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the cinematic emphasis of the star’s unattractive appearance often signifies a little character’s unprivileged social status, it neither marginalises nor makes the character a social outsider. Instead, the imperfectness and ordinariness has endowed the little character with the power as an insider of the Chinese society.

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Cinema: China 2, edited by Gary Bettinson (Bristol: Intellect, 2014), 124-128.

“Translocal Imagination of Hong Kong Connections: The Shifting of Chow Yun-fat’s Star Image Since 1997” in East Asian Film Stars, edited by Andy Willis and Leung Wing-Fai (London: Palgrave, 2014), 113-137.

"The Good, Bad and Ugly: Performing Whiteness in the Chinese Propaganda Cinema 1949-1976" in Image of Whiteness, edited by Clarissa Behar and Anastasia Chung (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013), 55-65.

"Glocalizing Stardom: Internet Publicity and the Construction of Chow Yun-fat's Transnational Stardom"

“Star Endorsement and Hong Kong Cinema: The Social Mobility of Chow Yun-fat 1986-1995”

"Chow Yun-fat: Hong Kong's Modern TV Xiaosheng"

Conference Presentations by Lin Feng

“Contesting Gender Space: Zhou Xuan and Chinese Female Stardom during the Republican Era” Women in East Asian Cinema conference (HOME, Manchester, 4-6 December 2019)

“Performativity in Chinese Artistic Documentaries: A Case Study of Xie Jin’s Huang Baomei (1958)” Documentaries and the Fiction/Nonfiction Divide conference (Queen Mary University of London, 15-16 November 2019)

“Looking for a (Chinese) Mother: The Construction of Pan-regional Chineseness in Lotus Lantern (dir. Chang Guangxi, 1999)” [invited speech] Cinemas of the Sinosphere: Border Crossing in Chinese Cinemas (University of Exeter, 20-22 September 2019)

“Shanghai Calling: Imagination of Cosmopolitanism in Co-produced Romantic Dramas” 13th Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference (LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, 24-26 June 2019)

“Multilingualism in Chinese Urban Films and Re-globalisation of Shanghai in the 1990s” Chinese Cinema in Global Context—Past and Present (University of Idaho, Moscow ID, 14-15 April 2019)

“Shanghai Jazz and Film Noir Crossover” Rethinking Film Genres: East Asian Cinema and Beyond, conference (University of Hull, 14-15 September 2017)

“Space Remixed: Filming Location, Selective Cosmopolitanism and Translating the Fluidity of Mega Cities in 007 Franchise” [invited speech]. Cosmopolitanism, World Cities and Circulation of Visual Culture between China and Britain (Shanghai Theatre Academy, 23 June 2017)

“Hear the Unseen: Shanghai Dialect and Taiwan Cinema”, SCMS annual conference (Atlanta, 30 March – 3 April 2016).

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond

by Lin Feng and James Aston

Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom

The Sound of Chinese Urban Cinema: Multilingualism and the Re-globalization of Shanghai in the 1990s

Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization, 2022

Old Shanghai and Film Noir Cross Over

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, 2020

Online video sharing: an alternative channel for film distribution? Copyright enforcement, censorship, and Chinese independent cinema

‘I’m ugly, but gentle’: performing ‘little character’ in post-Mao Chinese comedies

Download

Cinema: China 2, edited by Gary Bettinson (Bristol: Intellect, 2014), 124-128.

"Glocalizing Stardom: Internet Publicity and the Construction of Chow Yun-fat's Transnational Stardom"

“Star Endorsement and Hong Kong Cinema: The Social Mobility of Chow Yun-fat 1986-1995”

"Chow Yun-fat: Hong Kong's Modern TV Xiaosheng"

“Contesting Gender Space: Zhou Xuan and Chinese Female Stardom during the Republican Era” Women in East Asian Cinema conference (HOME, Manchester, 4-6 December 2019)

“Shanghai Calling: Imagination of Cosmopolitanism in Co-produced Romantic Dramas” 13th Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference (LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, 24-26 June 2019)

“Multilingualism in Chinese Urban Films and Re-globalisation of Shanghai in the 1990s” Chinese Cinema in Global Context—Past and Present (University of Idaho, Moscow ID, 14-15 April 2019)

“Shanghai Jazz and Film Noir Crossover” Rethinking Film Genres: East Asian Cinema and Beyond, conference (University of Hull, 14-15 September 2017)

“Hear the Unseen: Shanghai Dialect and Taiwan Cinema”, SCMS annual conference (Atlanta, 30 March – 3 April 2016).

“Now You See It; Now You Don’t: The Transpacific Imagination of Shanghai in Hollywood’s Sci-Fi Films”, SCMS annual conference (Montreal, 25-29 March 2015).

“Behind the Dazzling Lights: The Secret of Cosmopolitan Shanghai in Hollywood Action Blockbusters”, Screen annual conference (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 28-30 June 2013).

“I’m Ugly but Gentle’: Performing Xiaorenwu (litter character) in Chinese Comedies”, Revisiting Star Studies conference (Newcastle: Newcastle University, 12-14 June 2013).

“Weaving the Net: Followers, Fame and Film Criticism in an Inter-Media Era”, BAFTSS annual conference: Critics and Criticism: Writing on Audiovisual Media (Lincoln: University of Lincoln, 19-21 April 2013).

“The Good, Bad and Ugly: Performing Whiteness in the Chinese Propaganda Cinema 1949-1976”, Images of Whiteness annual conference: Exploring Critical Issues (Oxford: Mansfield College Oxford, 7-9 July 2012).

“Beyond the Cultural Revolution: Zhiqing’s Story and the Narrative of Urbanisation in Contemporary Chinese Independent Cinema” New Generation Chinese Cinema, conference (London: King’s College London, 26-27 May 2011).

“The Construction of Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Chow Yun-fat’s Comedies” MeCCSA annual conference (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 30 June-1 July 2010).

“The Birth of a TV Star: Chow Yun-fat, Typecasting and Hong Kong Modern Xiaosheng” Televising History: Nation, Memory, Identity, postgraduate conference (Lincoln: Lincoln University, 13-15 June 2007).

"The Birth of a Hollywood Star: Chinese Immigrants, Global Labour and Capitalisation of Ethnic Stardom", 1st International Congress on Chinese Studies Immigration and Cultural Exchanges (Bilbao: Centro de Estudios Chinos Lu Xun, 26-29 November 2008).

"Negotiating Transnational Stardom: Chow Yun-fat, Hollywood Blockbusters and Markets”, Identities Negotiations in Contemporary Space(s), postgraduate conference (Coventry: Warwick University, 2 December 2006).

“Republican Star Culture: The Case of Zhou Xuan” [invited guest lecture] (UCLA, 19 April 2018)

“Ghost Shanghai in Taiwan New Cinema and After” [invited talk], Chinese Cinema: Space, Identity and Politics, research symposium (Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 5 June 2015).

“Piracy, an Alternative Channel for Film Distribution? Online Film Sharing, Censorship and Chinese Independent Cinema”, China in Cyberspace: Platform, Content and Governance, interdisciplinary research workshop (Hull: University of Hull, 25 September 2014).

“Somewhere in Between: The Transpacific Imagination of Shanghai in American Independent Cinema since 2000” [invited talk], (Southampton: University of Southampton, 19 November 2013).

Chow Yun-fat: Hong Kong’s modern TV xiaosheng

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond

This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema wit... more This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema within the transnational context. It addresses several urgent and pertinent issues such as the distribution and exhibition practices of East Asian genre films, intra-regional creative flow of screen culture, and genre’s creative response to censorship. The volume expands the scholarly discussion of the rich heritage and fast-changing landscape of filmmaking in East Asian cinemas. Confronting the complex interaction between genres, filmic narrative and aesthetics, film history and politics, and cross-cultural translation, this book not only reevaluates genre’s role in film production, distribution, and consumption, but also tackles several under-explored areas in film studies and transnational cinema, such as the history of East Asian commercial cinema, the East Asian film industry, and cross-media and cross-market film dissemination. Contents Introduction (James Aston and Lin Feng) Part I: East Asian Film Genre in a Transnational Age (James Aston) 1. Rapidly Shifting Landscapes: Two Case Studies in the UK Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese Language Films in the 21st Century (Fraser Elliott and Andy Willis) 2. East Asian Noir: Transnational Film Noir in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong (Caleb Kelso-Marsh) 3. The Wolf is Coming: Genre hybridity in the contemporary Chinese Blockbuster (James Aston) Part II: Development of Genre film and Film Genre in East Asia Cinemas (James Aston) 4. Fantasy, Vampirism, and Genre/Gender Wars on the Chinese Screen of the Roaring 1920s (Shaoyi Sun) 5. Premodern History and the Contemporary South Korean Period Blockbuster (Louisa Mitchell) 6. Chinese Censorship, Genre Mediation and the Puzzle Films of Leste Chen (Gary Bettinson) Part III: The Politics of Genre Space (Lin Feng) 7. Critiquing New Generational Japanese Horror: “Youthful Fatalisms, Old Aesthetics” (Dave McCaig and Rachel Elizabeth Barraclough) 8. Genre and Censorship: The Crime Film in Late Colonial Hong Kong (Kistof Van den Troost) 9. Old Shanghai and Film Noir Crossover (Lin Feng) Notes on Contributors

Old Shanghai and Film Noir Cross Over

The Good, Bad and Ugly: Performing Whiteness in the Chinese Propaganda Cinema 1949-1976

Images of Whiteness, 2013

Online video sharing: an alternative channel for film distribution? Copyright enforcement, censorship, and Chinese independent cinema

Chinese Journal of Communication, 2016

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‘I’m ugly, but gentle’: performing ‘little character’ in post-Mao Chinese comedies

Transnational Cinemas, 2014

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Translocal Imagination of Hong Kong Connections

East Asian Film Stars

Star endorsement and Hong Kong cinema: The social mobility of Chow Yun-fat 1986–1995

Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 2011

ABSTRACT Cinema has long been connected with the mass consumption in our society. This article us... more ABSTRACT Cinema has long been connected with the mass consumption in our society. This article uses Chinese star Chow Yun-fat as a case study to investigate the construction of a male star's image as fashion and lifestyle icon in Hong Kong's consumer culture between 1986 and 1995. In addition to examining the Chow's star image in local advertisements released during the period of time, this article also explores the complex interaction of Chow's cinematic persona with his extra-cinematic image in Hong Kong's consumer culture. This article argues that the interaction between Chow's on-screen images and his presence in consumer commercials creates a public space for Hong Kong's new middle-class citizens to articulate the rise of their political and economic power, and to openly express their emerging sense of self.

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Books by Lin Feng

peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters by Lin Feng

Conference Presentations by Lin Feng

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