After the New Queer Cinema

This chapter historicizes the work of the New Queer Cinema (NQC), a term coined by the author to describe a group of groundbreaking films that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It argues that the NQC sensibility fueled subsequent imaginative film and television, from makers as diverse as Ang Lee, Todd Haynes, Silas Howard, and Celine Sciamma. At the heart of the chapter is the conviction that contemporary politics demand a new framework for queer and trans media, namely the idea of intersectionality, demonstrated by makers and artists such as Janelle Monae, Allie Logout, Wu Tsang, The Nest Collective, and the trio of Mika Gustafson, Olivia Kastebring, and Christina Tsiobanelis. Intersectionality enables mutuality, recognition, and alliance in a time of deep division and terror; it asks queer media makers to take transgression beyond personal expressions and identity into collective acts of world making.

The memory of perfection: Digital faces and nostalgic franchise cinema

This article is concerned with the intersection of digitally augmented performance and nostalgia in contemporary Hollywood franchise cinema. The practice of ‘de-ageing’ or even resurrecting actors following their real-life deaths in films like Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010), Terminator Genysis (Alan Taylor, 2015), Rogue One (Gareth Edwards, 2016), Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019), and a large number of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, is now commonplace. Though such digital faces are primarily still found in franchise cinema, some exceptions ( The Irishman, Martin Scorsese, 2019; Gemini Man, Ang Lee, 2019) are telling in their franchise-like appeals to cinematic nostalgia. In particular, the digital face is most commonly aligned with the ‘legacy film’ (Golding, 2019), resurrected franchises interested in transferring franchise protagonists, themes and fandom across generations. The digital face therefore is an expression of the convergence of the digital with film, with the franchise, with the past and with memory. For these films, memory and nostalgia are meticulous exercises involving thousands of work hours of highly skilled CGI workers and cutting-edge technology. These highly technical, virtuosic digital faces are quite literally the face of this kind of nostalgia, and as Ndalianis observes, position the face ‘as façade that opens up a time-travel passageway between past and present’, inviting a seam-spotting game between audience and filmmaker (2014). Even if the digital face is perfect in its recreation, the audience’s knowledge of the impossibility of the performance leaves a trace of artistry. Accordingly, digital faces are creative, technical and financial decisions above all. This article outlines the uses of the digital face for memory, nostalgia and seriality in contemporary Hollywood franchise cinema, with a focus on representation and death.

The Representation of Chineseness in Eat Drink Man Woman

Eat Drink Man Woman, well-known as the last episode of “Father-Knows-Best” trilogy directed by Ang Lee, is attractive to numerous scholars following its nomination of Oscar. Through comparative studies, voluminous critics have devoted to the theme of globalization and cultural identity. However, few scholars notice that cultural identity as a sign of national image experiences a series of transformations. Therefore, this article mainly probes how the transformation of cultural identity changes the ideological component of national memory that contributes to nurturing the Chinese national identity. Father’ s image and daughters’ role are prominently represented in the film, particularly father’s psychological changes in some sense projecting the transformation of traditional ideology. Thus, combined with historic background this article will set about the transformation of father’s role and daughter’s image which predicate the deconstruction of traditional gender discourse, trying to figure out how does the transformed ideology expressed through the deconstruction of gender discourse contribute to the reconstruction of Chinese national identity.

The Film Life of Pi as a Multimedia Tool in English Language Classrooms of Engineering Colleges in Gujarat- An ESP Approach

ESP advocates the designing of special courses instead of one multi-purpose course, to suit the needs of different courses of students. The curriculum of English as a course in Engineering Institutes differs from other disciplines in Arts, Commerce and Science colleges. Use of films as a multimedia tool and as an ESP approach in English classrooms of Engineering Institutes has become inevitable. For many students, films are their initial contact with English-speaking culture and a fun way to relax and also learn at the same time. The present study tries to examine the use of films as a multimedia tool in the English language classrooms of Engineering Institutes of Gujarat. The film Life of Pi by Ang Lee is considered as a major instrument for the present study. The study was conducted on a sample of 315 students pursuing their B.Tech in different Government Engineering colleges of Gujarat, India. The study was accomplished by using the survey and observation method. The survey questionnaire was used as a major instrument for the data collection of the study. The results suggests that Films as a teaching tool motivates student to learn English in second language classrooms and also helps them to understand and enhance their second language skills.

Film Comedy in East Asia

Informed by centuries of Daoist, Buddhist, Shinto, and Confucian thought as well as the particularities of Eastern languages and customs, film comedy in China, Korea, and Japan offers fascinating new viewpoints for Westerners. In contrast to the Greek distinction between comedy and tragedy, laughter in East Asia tends to be allied with equilibrium, an integral part of a balanced state and state of mind. This chapter highlights major figures and trends associated with humor in Japan (Yasujiro Ozu, Juzo Itami, Toshiro Mifune), Korea (Jee-won Kim, Sang-jin Kim), Hong Kong (Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow), Taiwan (Chun Han Wang, Ang Lee), and the People’s Republic of China (Zhang Yimou, Xiaogang Feng).

– The specificity of graphic cinema on the example of "Hulk" by Ang Lee

In the article the author is trying to define the characteristics of a graphic cinema as one of the main trends in nowadays comic book film adaptations production. One of the main elements of this trend is an ambitious effort to adapt the formal aspects of comic books for a movie screen in the most accurate way that is possible. By using one of the first examples of graphic cinema - Ang Lee’s “Hulk” — the author is trying to reconstruct its mechanisms of the following the comic book language and find out where the limits of adaptation between comic book and film are.

Fugu y cinetización de las relaciones sociales en el cine de Ang Lee

En este texto se estudia una porción del cine en el mundo chino. El sujeto de estudio es la trilogía de Ang Lee (李安Li An) conocida como Papá sabe más. Se tocan varios temas para ubicar contextualmente a la comida como metáfora poliséemica articuladora de las relaciones sociales. El cine de Lee, al menos el de estas páginas, es una defensa del fugu (复古), literalmente el regreso a costumbres y tradiciones antiguas. El apoyo conceptual es la cinetización, instrumento de análisis de los filmes propuesto con el objetivo de fortalecer la agenda de investigación del cine asiático.

Imagen fílmica y narración. Análisis cinematográfico de Sensatez y sentimientos (Ang Lee, 1995)

The film Sense and Sensibility of Ang Lee (USA, 1995) narrates one of the literary works of the British writer Jane Austen (1775-1817), who is not only most famous for writing under the domain of drama and romance genres (Bergan, 2011), but specifically has written about women in 19th-century England facing problems related to their social position and relations. We wonder the following: “how the sensibility and senses in the Victorian Era is materialized in the narrative of Ang Lee (1995)?” Therefore, this film study will investigate how the roles of cinematographic language (Martin, 2002) and elements of narrative analysis (Casetti y Di Chio, 2003); (Stam, 2014) are used in scenes and/or sequences (Aumont y Marie, 2009). Our purpose is to further understanding how feelings like sense and sensibility (Sellés, 2010) are materialized through three aspects in the film: the characters and the narrative language of the cinema (Aumont y Marie, 2009).