ABSTRACT

Cinema archives memories, conserves the past, and rewrites histories. As much as the Sinophone embodies differences, contemporary Sinophone cinemas in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China invest various images of contested politics in order to assert different histories and self-consciousness. As such, Sinophone cinemas and image production function as archives, with the capability of reinterpreting the multiple dimensions of past and present.

The Politics of Memory in Sinophone Cinemas and Image Culture investigates Sinophone films and art projects that express this desire for archiving and reconfiguring the past. Comprising ten chapters, this book brings together contributors from an array of disciplines - artists, filmmakers, curators, film critics, and literary scholars - to grapple with the creative ambiguities of Sinophone cinemas and image culture. Blending eclectic methods of scholarly research, knowledge-making, and art-making into a new discursive space, the chapters address the diverse complexities of the cinematic culture and image production in Sinitic language regions.

This book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of film studies, China studies, East Asian studies, Taiwan studies, and Sinophone studies, as well as professionals who work in the film industry.

chapter |14 pages

Introduction

part 15I|70 pages

Remembering China

chapter 2|14 pages

Persuasive communication in Chinese historical film

The Founding of a Republic as a milestone

chapter 3|21 pages

Images of redress and rehabilitation

“Ping fan (in) film” and perceptions of coming to terms with the past in China

chapter 4|18 pages

A familiar stranger

Grierson in China

part 85II|44 pages

Politicizing archives

chapter 6|11 pages

Making reverberation

Residue of sounds and images

chapter 7|16 pages

The digital emergence of a new history

The archiving of colonial Japanese documentaries on Taiwan

part 129III|56 pages

Manufactured archives

chapter 8|11 pages

Wong Kar-wai’s Mood Trilogy

Robot, tears, and the affective aura

chapter 9|21 pages

The missing and the fictional memory

Leitmotifs of Tsai Ming-liang’s oeuvre

chapter 10|22 pages

Light and shadow of jianghu

Peering into the contemporary political mythology in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and The Grandmaster