- London, London, City of, United Kingdom
Chris Berry
King's College London, Film Studies, Faculty Member
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SUMMARY. This essay chooses as its texts three films representing con-temporary gay male subjects from each of the ''three'' China's: HK, Tai-wan, and the Mainland. Relocating the homoerotic image of the... more
SUMMARY. This essay chooses as its texts three films representing con-temporary gay male subjects from each of the ''three'' China's: HK, Tai-wan, and the Mainland. Relocating the homoerotic image of the ''sad young man,'' a trope popular from Hollywood rebellion films of the ...
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FQ board member and contributor Chris Berry translates a conversation between the independent female filmmakers Ai Xiaoming and Zeng Jinyan. Although of different generations, Xiaoming and Zeng are both outliers in... more
FQ board member and contributor Chris Berry translates a conversation between the independent female filmmakers Ai Xiaoming and Zeng Jinyan. Although of different generations, Xiaoming and Zeng are both outliers in China's male-dominated film industry. The most prominent women filmmaker among the first generation of independent documentarians, Ai Xiaoming has lived under virtual house arrest since Xi Jinping's rise to power in 2012. Zeng Jinyan came to public attention in 2006, when she documented the disappearance of her husband, civil rights activist Hu Jia, in a protest blog; she later completed a PhD on the work of Ai Xiaoming while in exile in Hong Kong. Both women have recently reentered public life, Ai Xiaoming writing about her experiences of the novel coronavirus lockdown in her hometown of Wuhan and Zeng releasing a new film, Hanjiao yu eryu (Outcry and Whisper), focusing on the special pressures placed on women who dare to speak out in public in China.
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As Zhang Yingjin points out in Screening China, Chinese film has undergone "a meteoric rise in popularity ... on the world stage," (p. 15) and Chinese film studies is now "a blooming field" (p. 45) with a rapidly... more
As Zhang Yingjin points out in Screening China, Chinese film has undergone "a meteoric rise in popularity ... on the world stage," (p. 15) and Chinese film studies is now "a blooming field" (p. 45) with a rapidly increasing output of books and articles. Zhang's own book and Sheila Cornelius's New Chinese Cinema stand at opposite ends of this growing spectrum of monographs on Chinese cinema. Zhang's book is largely a metacritical work, giving his pronouncements and judgments on both films and scholarly works in the field. Cornelius's is a textbook aimed at the lower-level undergraduate and high-school market. Each has its unique merits that contribute to the burgeoning field and a few pitfalls that the unwary reader needs to be aware of. New Chinese Cinema is published in the "Short Cuts" introductory series published by Wallflower books. Its focus is on the films of the so-called Fifth and Sixth Generations of Chinese film directors who have come to international attention since the mid-1980s. The book's self-proclaimed aim is to enrich students' understanding of those films by placing them in their social and political context. The opening sections of the book are given over to outlining the general social and historical background of the People's Republic and its cinema. Following chapters introduce the Fifth Generation as a "new wave" cinema, and deal with two important and consistent elements that have attracted the interest of an international audience: disguised dissidence and engagement with Confucian patriarchy. These two elements are discussed in greater detail through case studies of Yellow Earth and Ju Dou. The next two chapters consider the Sixth Generation and their
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"Women's cinema" (../;( ~1 'l-J5 ) is a term that has come into common critical usage in the People's Republic of China over the last year or two. Certainly, Chinese commentators are aware of Western femi-nisms,... more
"Women's cinema" (../;( ~1 'l-J5 ) is a term that has come into common critical usage in the People's Republic of China over the last year or two. Certainly, Chinese commentators are aware of Western femi-nisms, and some have also heard of feminist filmmaking. However, both the term " ...
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Writing about national cinemas used to be an easy task: film critics believed all they had to do was construct a linear historical narrative describing the development of a cinema within a particular national boundary whose unity and... more
Writing about national cinemas used to be an easy task: film critics believed all they had to do was construct a linear historical narrative describing the development of a cinema within a particular national boundary whose unity and coherence seemed beyond all doubt.- ...
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Abstract Compendio de estudios sobre los cines chinos, consistente en 25 ensayos sobre otras tantos filmes producidos en China continental, Hong Kong, Taiwan y otros sectores de la diáspora china durante los años 1934-2000: The Goddess... more
Abstract Compendio de estudios sobre los cines chinos, consistente en 25 ensayos sobre otras tantos filmes producidos en China continental, Hong Kong, Taiwan y otros sectores de la diáspora china durante los años 1934-2000: The Goddess (dirigida por Wu Yonggang ...
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ABSTRACT A decade ago, I wrote a piece called ‘What Is Transnational Cinema? Thinking from the Chinese Situation’. It argued that knowledge is situational and perspectival; what transnational cinema is depends on when and where you are... more
ABSTRACT A decade ago, I wrote a piece called ‘What Is Transnational Cinema? Thinking from the Chinese Situation’. It argued that knowledge is situational and perspectival; what transnational cinema is depends on when and where you are looking from and writing about. It observed and analysed two current phenomena relevant to understanding what Chinese transnational cinema was then: the growth of cross-border Chinese film production involving the People’s Republic, Hong Kong, Taiwan and more, known as ‘Chinese-language cinemas’ (huayu dianying); and the larger phenomenon of globalisation. This article asks what has changed since and proposes ‘cinemas of the Sinosphere’ as an idea to encompass those changes. However, the term refers to two very different phenomena. First, it responds to the higher profile of films that are part of a Chinese cultural sphere but not in a Sinitic language, rendering the idea of ‘Chinese-language cinemas’ inadequate. Second, it acknowledges the re-emergence of the nation-state and what some people call the ‘Second Cold War’ or what I call a ‘Two Globalizations’ phenomenon, and it refers to the cinema of the People’s Republic of China under the conditions of the Belt and Road Initiative and the non-Chinese cinemas that respond to it.
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... Ph. (03) 646 5555. Shekhar Kapur's film, Bandit Queen, based on the life of the famous dacoit leader, Phoolan Devi, who was recently released from jail, is a far more ambitious film than Bhaji on the Beach. ... The real Phoolan... more
... Ph. (03) 646 5555. Shekhar Kapur's film, Bandit Queen, based on the life of the famous dacoit leader, Phoolan Devi, who was recently released from jail, is a far more ambitious film than Bhaji on the Beach. ... The real Phoolan Devi begs to differ. ...
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... Routledge: 1-7. Chen, Kuan-Hsing (2005)'A Borrowed Life in Banana Paradise: De-Cold War/Decolonization, or Modernity and Its Tears', in Chris Berry and Feii Lu (eds) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After,... more
... Routledge: 1-7. Chen, Kuan-Hsing (2005)'A Borrowed Life in Banana Paradise: De-Cold War/Decolonization, or Modernity and Its Tears', in Chris Berry and Feii Lu (eds) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press: 39-53. ...
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agree with the author that there is no need to “redeem” Guo himself, but Guo’s importance to the era can’t be overstated, and so this book is a welcome addition. Like Lydia Liu’s work, on which it builds, it demonstrates the critical... more
agree with the author that there is no need to “redeem” Guo himself, but Guo’s importance to the era can’t be overstated, and so this book is a welcome addition. Like Lydia Liu’s work, on which it builds, it demonstrates the critical importance of translation to the study of modern China, whether that study be situated in the humanities or in the social sciences. I believe it makes less of a contribution to translation studies than it could. It mainly uses translation studies as a source of frameworks and concepts to apply to the primary materials, and doesn’t deeply interrogate translation studies in return. There are moments when the analysis begins to demonstrate the inadequacy of Lawrence Venuti’s popular “domestication” versus “foreignization” model of translation criticism for Guo’s work and, potentially, for the post-imperial, Chinese and revolutionary contexts; I would like to see this strand of the argument taken much further in the future. The Translatability of Revolution is for specialists in modern Chinese culture. It will be necessary reading for anyone studying Guo Moruo or the historiography of the revolutionary era. The writing style contains too much jargon for general classroom use, although it may be considered for graduate seminars. Chapter six, on the use of modernizing translations of ancient poetry, is the most approachable, and in my opinion, the most broadly applicable part of the book, and I would encourage anyone planning a graduate seminar on translation studies or Chinese literary history to include it in the syllabus.
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... 2008); (editor) Chinese Films in Focus II (2008); (edited with Feiyi Lu) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (2005); (edited with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue) Mobile ... Cathryn Clayton is assistant professor in Asian... more
... 2008); (editor) Chinese Films in Focus II (2008); (edited with Feiyi Lu) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (2005); (edited with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue) Mobile ... Cathryn Clayton is assistant professor in Asian studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. ...
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... Teo has accused the film of bad taste; its director, Stanley Kwan, is now embarrassed by it; butTony Rayns thinks it ... Starring: Seema Biswas and Nirmal Pandey. ... rape revenge movie, based on the life and career of bandit queen... more
... Teo has accused the film of bad taste; its director, Stanley Kwan, is now embarrassed by it; butTony Rayns thinks it ... Starring: Seema Biswas and Nirmal Pandey. ... rape revenge movie, based on the life and career of bandit queen Phoolan Devi, was reviewed by Raj Pandey in the ...