Literati lenses: Wenren landscape in Chinese cinema of the Mao Era

Author(s):  
Amir Khan
Keyword(s):  
Asian Cinema ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-283
Author(s):  
Young Ji Lee
Keyword(s):  

Review of: Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema of the Mao Era, Mia Yinxing Liu (2019) Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 242 pp., ISBN-13: 978-0-82485-983-1, h/bk, $75.00


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Dhruba Karki

 Zhang Yimou’s Hero presents an action hero, yet in a slightly different cinematic mode than that of Stephen Chow-directed Shaolin Soccer to blend myth and modernity. In Yimou’s martial arts cinema, Jet Li-starred Nameless hero uses martial arts to combat the king’s adversaries, including Donnie Yen-starred Long Sky, Maggie Cheung-starred Flying Snow and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai-starred Broken Sword in the service to the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 207 BC). The warrior hero’s indigenous body art helps the Qin Dynasty transform the smaller warring kingdoms into a powerful Chinese Empire, a strong foundation of modern China with economic and military superpower. Like their western counterparts, including T1000 and Neo, the Hong Kong action heroes, such as the warrior hero and the Qin King have been refashioned in the Hollywood controlled twentieth-century popular culture. Different from their Hollywood counterparts in actions, the Hong Kong action heroes in Hero primarily use their trained bodies and martial skills to promote the Chinese civilization, an adaptation of the Hollywood tradition of technologized machine body. Reworking of myth and archetype in Nameless’s service to the Qin Dynasty and the emperor’s mission to incept the Chinese Empire, the Hong Kong action heroes appear on screen, a blend of tradition and modernity. The film industry’s projection of the Chinese history with the legendary action heroes, including Nameless soldier and the Qin King globalizes the indigenous Chinese culture by using modern electronic digital technology, a resonance of the western technological advancement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-133
Author(s):  
Markus Nornes

Abstract This essay examines a regional, not global, dimension of Chinese cinema: the Chinese character in its brushed form. Calligraphy and cinema have an intimate relationship in East Asia. Indeed, the ubiquity of the brushed word in cinema is one element that actually ties works in Korean, Japanese and Sinophone Asia together as a regional cinema. At the same time, I will explore the very specific difference of Chinese filmmakers’ use of written language. On first glance, cinema and calligraphy would appear as radically different art forms. On second glance, they present themselves as sister arts. Both are art forms built from records of the human body moving in (an absent) time and space. The essay ends with a consideration of subtitling, upon which Chinese cinema’s global dimension is predicated. How does investigating this very problem lead us to rethinking the nature of the cinematic subtitle, which is very much alive―a truly movable type?


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