CHT 3391 01

Chinese Cinema and Culture

This course is offered for students who are interested either in film or in Chinese culture. Ever since film was introduced into China at the end of the nineteenth century, it has become a major medium of mass communication there, and has played an important role in China’s long march toward modernity. By presenting representative films from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, this course enables students to study Chinese cinema both as a unique genre of modern arts and as a powerful social and political discourse. Upon completing this course, students will have attained 1) an overall view of the development of film in China, 2) the necessary skills for interpreting the cinematic language by which Chinese filmmakers articulate their ideas, 3) some basic knowledge of Chinese literary and aesthetic conventions, and 4) an appropriate understanding of the social issues and cultural customs illuminated on the Chinese screen.

No knowledge of the Chinese language is required. This course satisfies the multicultural requirements, and can be taken for minor credits in Chinese and major or minor credits in Asian studies.

The course materials are presented from both historical and critical perspectives. We will examine films from the 1940s to the late 1990s. There will be two sessions each week: one for screening a film, and the other for lecture and discussion on the film screened that week. The screenings of films are organized around a number of topics that would allow students to approach each film with a critical focus and to put several films in a comparative context; such topics include the family and tradition, China’s peasants, the individual versus class/the state, the impact of the Cultural Revolution; gender, and the challenge to the Chinese nationhood by the special cases of Hong Kong and Taiwan.