Since the early 1990s, while mainland China’s state-owned movie
studios have struggled with financial and ideological constraints,
an exciting alternative cinema has developed. Dubbed the “Urban
Generation,” this new cinema is driven by young filmmakers who
emerged in the shadow of the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
What unites diverse directors under the “Urban Generation”
rubric is their creative engagement with the wrenching economic and
social transformations underway in China. Urban Generation
filmmakers are vanguard interpreters of the confusion and anxiety
triggered by the massive urbanization of contemporary China. This
collection brings together some of the most recent original
research on this emerging cinema and its relationship to Chinese
society.The contributors analyze the historical and social
conditions that gave rise to the Urban Generation, its aesthetic
innovation, and its ambivalent relationship to China’s mainstream
film industry and the international film market. Focusing attention
on the Urban Generation’s sense of social urgency, its
documentary impulses, and its representations of gender and
sexuality, the contributors highlight the characters who populate
this new urban cinema—ordinary and marginalized city dwellers
including aimless bohemians, petty thieves, prostitutes, postal
workers, taxi drivers, migrant workers—and the fact that these
“floating urban subjects” are often portrayed by
non-professional actors. Some essays concentrate on specific films
(such as Shower and Suzhou River) or filmmakers (including Jia
Zhangke and Zhang Yuan), while others survey broader concerns.
Together the thirteen essays in this collection give a multifaceted
account of a significant, ongoing cinematic and cultural
phenomenon. Contributors. Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, Shuqin Cui,
Linda Chiu-han Lai, Charles Leary, Sheldon H. Lu, Jason McGrath,
Augusta Palmer, Bérénice Reynaud, Yaohua Shi, Yingjin Zhang,
Zhang Zhen, Xueping Zhong
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