Shorlisted for the BAFTSS 2020 Award for Best Monograph Despite his films being subjected to censorship and denigration in his native China, Jia Zhangke has become the country's leading independent film director internationally. Seen as one of world cinema's foremost auteurs, he has played a crucial role in documenting and reflecting upon China's era of intense transformations since the 1990s. Cecília Mello provides in-depth analysis of Jia's unique body of work, from his early films Xiao Wu and Platform, to experimental quasi-documentary 24 City and the audacious Mountains May Depart. Mello suggests that Jia's particular expression of the realist mode is shaped by the aesthetics of other Chinese artistic traditions, allowing Jia to unearth memories both personal and collective, still lingering within the ever-changing landscapes of contemporary China. Mello's groundbreaking study opens a door into Chinese cinema and culture, addressing the nature of the so-called 'impure' cinematographic art and the complex representation of China through the ages. Foreword by Walter Salles
Autorentext
Cecília Mello is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She has written previously on Jia Zhangke in book chapters and articles, and she is the co-editor, with Lúcia Nagib, of Realism and the Audiovisual Media (2009; paperback 2013).
Klappentext
Shorlisted for the BAFTSS 2020 Award for Best Monograph
Despite his films being subjected to censorship and denigration in his native China, Jia Zhangke has become the country's leading independent film director internationally. Seen as one of world cinema's foremost auteurs, he has played a crucial role in documenting and reflecting upon China's era of intense transformations
since the 1990s.
Cecília Mello provides in-depth analysis of Jia's unique body of work, from his early films Xiao Wu and Platform, to experimental quasi-documentary 24 City and the audacious Mountains May Depart. Mello suggests that Jia's particular expression of the realist mode is shaped by the aesthetics of other Chinese artistic traditions, allowing Jia to unearth memories both personal and collective, still lingering within the ever-changing landscapes of contemporary China. Mello's groundbreaking study opens
a door into Chinese cinema and culture, addressing the nature of the so-called 'impure' cinematographic art and the complex representation of China through the ages.
Foreword by Walter Salles
Zusammenfassung
Shorlisted for the BAFTSS 2020 Award for Best MonographDespite his films being subjected to censorship and denigration in his native China, Jia Zhangke has become the country's leading independent film director internationally. Seen as one of world cinema's foremost auteurs, he has played a crucial role in documenting and reflecting upon China's era of intense transformationssince the 1990s.Cec lia Mello provides in-depth analysis of Jia's unique body of work, from his early films Xiao Wu and Platform, to experimental quasi-documentary 24 City and the audacious Mountains May Depart. Mello suggests that Jia's particular expression of the realist mode is shaped by the aesthetics of other Chinese artistic traditions, allowing Jia to unearth memories both personal and collective, still lingering within the ever-changing landscapes of contemporary China. Mello's groundbreaking study opensa door into Chinese cinema and culture, addressing the nature of the so-called 'impure' cinematographic art and the complex representation of China through the ages.Foreword by Walter Salles
Inhalt
1. 'Introduction: Jia Zhangke, Realism, Memory and Impurity'
2. 'The Walls of China: Between Ephemerality and Permanence'
3. 'Ping Yao's City Walls: On-Location Filming and the Weight of History'
4. 'Pop Music's Sonic Memories'
5. 'Landscape Painting, Chinese Philosophy and the Aesthetic Innovation of Still Life'
6. 'Opera, Wuxia and China's Imagined Civilization'
7. 'Painterly Still Lives and Photographic Poses: Stillness and the Moving Image'
8. 'Garden Heterotopias and the Memory of Space'
9. 'I Wish I Knew's Cinephilic Journeys (an afterword on intertextuality)'
10. Bibliography