CHI 321
Dept. of Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Culture
University of Kentucky
Spring 2005
Wu, Shengqing
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Office: TBA
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Not Only Kung Fu: Introduction to Contemporary Chinese Film
The course will offer an overview of major films, directors and actors in the
contemporary PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It will examine the genres of Chinese
film better known in the States, including Hong Kong action film, fifth-generation
mainland cinema, and Taiwanese urban dramas. We will critically engage such topics
as cinematic historiography, nation as narration and the literary movement, traumatic
memory of post/colonialism, l’ecriture feminine and gendered differences,
theatricality within the post/modern urbanity, and contestation of aesthetic
representations. The course will provide an understanding of contemporary Chinese
cinema, through analyses of the content and style, poetics and politics of
films/filmmakers/film movements, which ultimately reflects a Chinese cultural value
system and many differing Chinese aesthetics vis-à-vis the Western and Hollywood
views. All films are screened with English subtitles.
Course Requirements:
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Attendance, Participation and Reviews (5): The review is an exercise of your
analytical and interpretive skills. It should be a critique rather than a summary
of the film. In a film review, you are encouraged to use the critical
perspectives in the assigned articles for secondary readings and share your
insight and understanding. This narrative of one page is to be delivered orally
in class, and submitted both in hard copy and via email to be circulated
electronically among class members.
30%
Two 5-page Essays: Quality of thought and quality of writing are inseparable;
your paper will be evaluated on both of these accounts.
30%
Multiple Choice Tests of Viewing Material: These tests will assume
knowledge of class discussion, films, and all assigned readings.
20%
Final Exam:
20%
TOTAL PERCENTAGES
100%
Grading:
90-100%
80-89%
70-79%
60-69%
Below 60%
A
B
C
D
E
Student Learning Outcomes
At the end of this course the student should be able to:
--Interpret contemporary Chinese film;
--Contextualize contemporary Chinese film within the appropriate culture and era;
--Write cogent, convincing reviews of the films that will be viewed;
--Analyze secondary literature on the films in order to expand the interpretive
possibilities for viewing the films;
--Articulate the values, gender issues, and artistic qualities that define and shape the
films and their viewers.
Suggested Background Readings:
Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, (New York: Norton, 1992).
Sue Williams, China A Century of Revolution (Winstar TV & Video, 2001) 3 videos.
Required Text:
Course Reader
Weekly Schedule: (TENTATIVE)
Week 1 Introduction
Topics: Chinese film and international recognition, historical background.
In-class viewing: clips from Lumière Brothers, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1895
and Ann Hu, Shadow Magic, 2001; Zhang Yimou, Untitled Short, 1995.
Week 2 The Legacy of Martial Arts I
Topics: Aesthetics of movement and violence, comparison between Kung fu and
martial arts, martial art novel, imaging Bruce Lee & Jackie Chan, martial arts auteurs.
Screening: Dragon Gate Inn, dir. King Hu, 1968.
In-class viewing: clips from One Armed Swordsman, dir. Zhang Che, 1967; Enter the
Dragon, dir. Robert Clouse, 1973; Drunken Master, dir. Yuen Wo-ping, 1978; Hero,
dir. Zhang Yimou, 2002.
Reading: David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American
Reception,” in Fu & Desser eds. The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Art, Identity,
(New York: Cambridge UP, 2000).
Week 3 The Legacy of Martial Arts II
Screening: Asia the Invincible, dir. Siu-tung Ching, 1992.
Reading: David Bordwell, “How to Watch a Martial Arts Movie” in Heroic Grace:
The Chinese Martial Arts Film (LA: UCLA Film Archive, 2003).
------, “Motion Emotion: The Art of the Action Movie,” and “Three Martial Masters:
Zhang Che, Lau Kar-leung, King Hu,” from Bordwell (2000).
Stephen Teo, “The Dao of King Hu” and “The Sword and the Fist” in Hong Kong
Cinema (London: BFI, 1997), pp.87-109.
Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger, (London:
Wallflower, 2003).
Week 4 China’s Search for Roots
Topics: film and ethnography; Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms.
Screening: Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou, 1985
Readings: Rey Chow, “The Force of Surfaces: Defiance in Zhang Yimou’s Films.”
Yingjin Zhang, “Ideology of the Body in Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum: National
Allegory, National Roots, and Third Cinema,” in Dissanayake (1994)
Jerome Silbergeld, “The Children of Melodrama: No-Drama, Pseudo-drama,
Melodramatic Masquerade and Deconstruction Drama,” in Silbergeld (1999).
Week 5 Women in the New Wave of Chinese Cinema
Topics: portrayal of women, gender as performance
Screening: Ju Dou, dir. Zhang Yimou, 1990
Reading: Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Gender
and the Politics of History, (NY: Columbia UP, 1988), pp 28-50.
Rey Chow, “Visuality, Modernity, and Primitive Passions” in Primitive Passions
(1995).
Shuqin Cui, “Gendered Perspective: The Construction and Representation of
Subjectivity and Sexuality in Ju Dou,” in Lu (1997).
Dai Jinhua, “Gender and Narration: Women in Contemporary Chinese Film,” in Dai
(2000)
Week 6. Literature and Film: Un-healing Wounds & Realism.
Topics: Inscription of traumatic memory, Literary Adaptation
Screening: To Live, dir. Zhang Yimou, 1994.
Reading: Yu Hua, To Live.
Rey Chow, “We Endure, Therefore We Are: Survival, Governance, and Zhang
Yimou’s To Live,” from The South Atlantic Quarterly 95:4, Fall (1996): 1039-1064.
Week 7 Memory and Cultural Politics I
Topics: The Cultural Revolution on screen, and "Mao nostalgia" in contemporary
China.
Screening: In the Heat of the Sun, dir. Jiang Wen, 1995
Reading: Geremie Barmé, “The Apotheosis of the Liumang.” From In the Red: on
Contemporary Chinese Culture (NY: Columbia UP,1999).
Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism." In Under the Sign of Saturn (NY: Anchor
Books, 1991).
Week 8 Memory and Cultural Politics II
Topics: Trauma and colonialism; nation and narration.
Screening: City of Sadness, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989.
Reading: William Tay, “The Ideology of Initiation: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien,”
in Browne (1994).
June Yip, “Constructing A Nation: Taiwanese History and the Films of Hou Hsiaohsien” In Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu ed., Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity,
Nationhood, Gender. (Honolulu: U of Hawaii Press, 1997).
Week 9 Taiwanese New Wave and Re-mappings of Taipei
Topics: representation of city and space; modernity and post modernity.
Screening: Terrorizer, dir. Edward Yang, 1986.
Reading: Jameson “Remapping Taipei”, Philip Rosen ed., Narrative, Apparatus,
Ideology: a Film Theory Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) Chap.
9-11.
Week 10 Taiwanese New Wave and Re-mappings of Taipei II
Screening: Vive L’amour, dir. Ts’ai Ming-liang, 1994.
Reading: Zhu Tian-wen. "Fin-de-siecle Splendor." In S. M. Lau and Howard
Goldblatt, eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. NY:
Columbia UP, 1995.
Week 11. The Emerging Subjectivity and Disappearing Cities I
Topics of Discussion: Interiority, Modernity/Post modernity debate, city and space.
Screening: Days of Being Wild, dir. Wong Kar-wai, 1991.
Reading: Ackbar Abbas, “The New Hong Kong Cinema and the deja disparu.”
Curtis Tsui, “Subjective Culture and History: The Ethnographic Cinema of Wong
Kar-wai,” Asian Cinema 7.2 Winter 1995.
Week 12 The Emerging Subjectivity and Disappearing Cities II
Screening: In the Mood for Love, dir. Wong Kar-wai, 2000.
Reading: Xiaobing Tang, “In Search of the Real City: Cinematic Representations of
Beijing and the Politics of Vision,” in Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian
(Duke UP, 2000), pp245-272.
Yingjin Zhang, “The Symbolic Triumph of Chinese tradition in Beijing,” and “The
Circulation of Temporality and Eroticism in Shanghai,” in Zhang (1996)
Week 13. Returning to the Real(ity): Ficto-documentary and Documentary
Movement I
Topics of discussion: Institutionalization of Independent filmmaking, Comparative
Mode of Documentary in Taiwan and China, international festival circuit and
production.
Screening: Xiao Wu, dir. Jia Zhang-ke, 1997.
In-class viewing: The Other Bank, dir. Jiang Yue, 1994; Barkhor South Street No. 16,
dir. Duan Jinchuan, 1998; Square, dir. Zhang Yuan and Duan Jinchuan, 1995; Sons,
dir. Zhang Yuan, 1996.
Reading: Chris Berry, Interviews with Duan Jinchuan, Cinemaya 28-9, pp 140-146.
Week 14 Returning to the Real(ity): Ficto-documentary and Documentary
Movement II
Screening: My Camera Doesn’t Lie, dir. Katherina Schneider, 2002.
Reading: Sheila Cornelius, “The Sixth Generation” in New Chinese Cinema:
Challenging Representation, (London: Wallflower, 2002).
Week 15. The Inter-textual Cities and the Transnational Outcast
Topics of discussion: Addressing the presence of Hollywood, global narrative and
local aesthetics
Screening: Made in Hong Kong, dir. Fruit Chan, 1997.
Reading: Ackbar Abbas, “Disappearance of Hong Kong”
Jean-Pierre Rehm, “Bringing in the Rain,” in Tsai Ming-liang, (Paris: Dis Voir, 2001).