Chinese Film: Realism and Convention from the Silent Era to the Digital Age

Description

A tour de force chronicling the development of realism in Chinese cinema   The history of Chinese cinema is as long and complicated as the tumultuous history of China itself. Be it the silent, the Communist, or the contemporary, each Chinese cinematic era has necessitated its own form in conversation with broader trends in politics and culture.  In Chinese Film, Jason McGrath tells this fascinating story by tracing the varied claims to cinematic realism made by Chinese filmmakers, officials, critics, and scholars. Understanding realism as a historical dynamic that is both enabled and mitigated by aesthetic conventions of the day, he analyzes it across six different types of claims: ontological, perceptual, fictional, social, prescriptive, and apophatic. Through this method, McGrath makes major claims not just about Chinese cinema but also about realism as an aesthetic form that negotiates between cultural conventions and the ever-evolving real. He comes to envision it as more than just a cinematic question, showing how the struggle for realism is central to the Chinese struggle for modernity itself. Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Inscribing the Real: Cinematic Realism and Convention Chapter 1. Acting Real in Chinese Silent Cinema Chapter 2. Shanghaiing Hollywood in the 1930s Chapter 3. Realism and Event in Postwar Chinese Cinema Chapter 4. Prescriptive Realism in Revolutionary Cinema of the Seventeen Years Chapter 5. Socialist Formalism and the End(s) of Revolutionary Cinema Chapter 6. A Long Take on Post–Socialist Realism Chapter 7. Chinese Cinematic Realism(s) in the Digital Age Conclusion Notes Index About the Author