The End-of-Century Nostalgia of Movies - Hollywood. Old Shanghai. New Taipei

Author: Zhang Yingjin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: This is a collection of essays on nostalgic films that takes you on a journey of enjoying the infinite aesthetics of century-old cinema. The articles collected in this book on Chinese cinema and film studies are divided into three thematic parts. Part I is "International," which primarily reveals the manifestations of Western-centric discourse hegemony in film production and film studies. It analyzes the patterns of shaping Chinese images in Hollywood over the past century, points out the ideological and aesthetic influences of Western international film festivals on China's "independent cinema," and explores recent Western theories and methodologies regarding Chinese film studies. The second part is "Shanghai," which focuses on analyzing the presentation of gender imagination and urban narratives in films. Using the figures of Shanghai courtesans and modern women during the Republican era as examples, it also discusses the recent nostalgia for old Shanghai prevalent in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The third part is "Chinese Language Cinema," which still takes cities in "Chinese-language cinema" as its subject, including Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. It includes both descriptions of overall development and analyses of specific works, with topics covering Hong Kong's historical transregional imagination, urban-rural sentiments during the period of social transformation, and the reconstruction of time and space in Taipei at the end of the century, among others.