Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema

A historically informed examination of independent moving image works made between 1990 and 2010 in China Showcasing an evolving personal mode of narrating memory, documenting reality, and inscribing subjectivity in over 16 selected works that range from narrative film and documentary to experimental video and digital media, this book presents a provocative portrait of the independent filmmakers as a peculiarly pained yet active group of historical subjects of the transitional, post-socialist era. Through a connected investigation of cultural and cinematic concepts including historical consciousness, personal memory, narrative, performance, subjectivity, spatiality, and the body, Wang weaves a critical narrative of the formation of a unique post-socialist cultural consciousness that enables independent cinema and media to become a highly significant and effective conduit for historical thinking in contemporary China. It explores the works of leading Chinese directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Jia Zhangke, Jiang Wen, Lou Ye, Meng Jinghui, Wang Bing, Wang Guangli, Duan Jinchuan, Cui Zi’en, Shi Tou, and Tang Danhong.It examines the breadth of independent Chinese cinema including documentary and experimental video.

Reviews of Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema

"Qi Wang's radical intervention revaluates Chinese independent cinema's challenge to the official and commercial media. Instead of emphasizing the realist determination to document everyday life in contemporary China since the 1990s, she shows us how these films also invoke history through personal memory in their attempt to come to terms with the earthquakes in Chinese social, cultural, and political values of the last half century. Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema is a dense, detailed, and riveting account of the postsocialist generation's subjectivity. Richly illustrated and informed by new research and numerous interviews, its shining audacity takes my breath away." – Chris Berry, King's College London