Notes on Contributors v
Introduction: One Film at a Time – Again 1
Chris Berry
1 15: The Singapore Failure Story, ‘Slanged Up’ 9
Song Hwee Lim
2 Big Shot’s Funeral: Performing a Post-modern Cinema of Attractions 17
Yingjin Zhang
3 Black Cannon Incident: Countering the Counter-espionage Fantasy 25
Jason McGrath
4 Blind Shaft: Performing the ‘Underground’ on and beyond the Screen 32
Jonathan Noble
5 Boat People: Second Thoughts on Text and Context 40
Julian Stringer
6 Centre Stage: A Shadow in Reverse 48
Bérénice Reynaud
7 A Chinese Ghost Story: Ghostly Counsel and Innocent Man 56
John Zou
8 Chungking Express: Time and its Displacements 64
Janice Tong
9 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Cultural Migrancy and Translatability 73
Felicia Chan
10 Crows and Sparrows: Allegory on a Historical Threshold 82
Yiman Wang
11 Durian Durian: Defamiliarisation of the ‘Real’ 90
Esther M. K. Cheung
12 Ermo: (Tele)Visualising Urban/Rural Transformation 98
Ping Fu
13 Farewell My Concubine: National Myth and City Memories 106
Yomi Braester
14 Flowers of Shanghai: Visualising Ellipses and (Colonial) Absence 114
Gary G. Xu
15 Formula 17: Mainstream in the Margins 121
Brian Hu
[email protected]
16 The Goddess: Fallen Woman of Shanghai 128
Kristine Harris
17 Hero: The Return of a Traditional Masculine Ideal in China 137
Kam Louie
18 In the Mood for Love: Intersections of Hong Kong Modernity 144
Audrey Yue
19 Kekexili: Mountain Patrol: Moral Dilemma and a Man with a Camera 153
Shuqin Cui
20 The Love Eterne: Almost a (Heterosexual) Love Story 160
Tan See-Kam and Annette Aw
21 Not One Less: The Fable of a Migration 167
Rey Chow
22 The Personals: Backward Glances, Knowing Looks and the Voyeur Film 175
Margaret Hillenbrand
23 PTU: Re-mapping the Cosmopolitan Crime Zone 182
Vivian Lee
24 The Red Detachment of Women: Resenting, Regendering, Remembering 189
Robert Chi
25 Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles: Redeeming the Father by Way of Japan? 197
Faye Hui Xiao
26 Spring in a Small Town: Gazing at Ruins 205
Carolyn FitzGerald
27 A Time to Live, A Time to Die: A Time to Grow 212
Corrado Neri
28 A Touch of Zen: Action in Martial Arts Movies 219
Mary Farquhar
29 Vive L’Amour: Eloquent Emptiness 227
Fran Martin
30 Wedding Banquet: A Family (Melodrama) Affair 235
Chris Berry
31 Woman, Demon, Human: The Spectral Journey Home 243
Haiyan Lee
32 Xiao Wu: Watching Time Go By 250
Chris Berry
33 Yellow Earth: Hesitant Apprenticeship and Bitter Agency 258
Helen Hok-sze Leung
34 Yi Yi: Reflections on Reflexive Modernity in Taiwan 265
David Leiwei Li
Chinese Names 273
Compiled by Wang Dun and Chris Berry
Chinese Film Titles 277
Compiled by Wang Dun and Chris Berry
Index 279
iv CHINESE FILMS IN FOCUS II
[email protected]
Annette J. Aw is Adjunct Associate Professor in the
Department of Communication at the University of
Maryland University College. She is also an independent research consultant in Washington, DC,
where she conducts media-related studies for private
businesses, trade associations and government agencies. Before working in the United States, she taught
at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
between 1995 and 2001. Her research and teaching
interests focus on public relations and intercultural
communication in Asia and the United States.
Chris Berry is Professor of Film and Television Studies in the Department of Media and Communication
at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research is
focused on Chinese cinemas and other Chinese
screen-based media. His publications include (with
Mary Farquhar) China on Screen: Cinema and Nation
(Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006); Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao
China: The Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (Routledge, 2004); (edited with Feii Lu)
Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After
(Hong Kong University Press, 2005); (editor) Chinese
Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (BFI, 2003); (edited
with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue) Mobile Cultures:
New Media and Queer Asia (Duke University Press,
2003); and (translator and editor) Ni Zhen, Memoirs
from the Beijing Film Academy: The Origins of China’s
Fifth Generation Filmmakers (Duke University Press,
2002).
Yomi Braester is Associate Professor of Comparative
Literature and a member of the Program in Cinema
Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.
He is the author of Witness Against History: Literature, Film and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century
China (Stanford University Press, 2003) and Painting
the City Red: Film and Drama as Agents of Chinese
Urban Policy, from 1949 to the Beijing Olympics (Duke
University Press, forthcoming).
Felicia Chan is RCUK Fellow in Film, Media and
Transnational Cultures, at the Research Institute for
Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC), University of Manchester. Her research interests lie in issues of cultural
translation, intertextuality and modernity in film, literature and other cultural texts. She has published in
Critical Studies in Television, EnterText, Inter-Asia
Cultural Studies, Refractory: Journal of Entertainment
Media, Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television
Studies and English Studies in Asia, edited by Araki,
Lim, Minami and Yoshihara (Silverfish, 2007)
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