Media Industries, Global Perspectives
# East Asia

27 February 2020, 13.00-14.30

Li-An Ko and Shuangli Guo, both PhD candidates at the Media and Culture Studies department of Utrecht University, and Jiyu Zhang, PhD candidate at the Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University will discuss their research on Taiwanese and mainland Chinese historical and contemporary cinema. Associate professor and visiting scholar Cynthia Qijun Han (Nanjing University of Science and Technology) will serve as discussant.

Beyond Storytelling
Early Chinese Film History between Attraction and Narration before the 1920s
by Shuangli Guo

In the past 35 years, there has been a new trend of “Archaeology of the Cinema” or “Media Archaeology” in the study of Western early film history. Cinema Archaeology mainly focuses on the “initial period of cinema”, that is, films between the 1890s and 1906. However, by focusing on optical toy history, such as magic mirror, telescope, camera obscura, and magic lantern, pre-narrative-cinema “film-like” visual experiences emerge.

Beyond Sadness
Historical Films in the Post-Martial Law Period of Taiwan (1987-2017)
by Li-An Ko

Following the end of the martial law period in Taiwan in 1987, a number of films were produced to represent Taiwan’s past with previously suppressed viewpoints. Focusing on A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1989), Flat Tyre (Huang Ming-Chuan, 1998), and Seediq Bale (Wei Te-Sheng, 2011), Ko will discuss how these films may serve as a kind of historical writing that provides interesting reflections while taking into account postcolonial conditions, such as historical amnesia, as well as their production context.

Central Frontiers
The Paradox of Modern Nation in Chinese Cinema
by Jiyu Zhang

In his research, Zhang investigates modern China’s national formation through the prism of cinema, for which he considers Chinese cinema from historical, national, and geopolitical perspectives. Primarily, Zhang proposes that cinema, which arrived in China as a Western invention, has engaged in and impacted on China’s sociopolitical transition ever since the country shifted from a dynastic empire to a modern nation-state. Focusing on the chronic tension between ideological indoctrination and personal articulation, the research fleshes out how the idea of nation has been disseminated and propagated by Chinese cinema.

Discussant: dr. Cynthia Qijun Han

Cynthia Qijun Han is an associate professor at the School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. She received her doctorate in Media and Cultur studies from Utrecht University. Her research interests lie in the intersections of history, culture and identity in the Chinese context. Currently she is researching the Chinese reception of Hollywood’s Chinese imagination.

Organizer: dr. Willemien Sanders