China on Video (Routledge Studies in Asia's Transformations) - Softcover

Voci, Paola

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415814200 ISBN 13: 9780415814201

Publisher: Routledge, 2012

Synopsis

China On Video is the first in-depth study that examines smaller-screen realities and the important role they play not only in the fast-changing Chinese mediascape, but also more broadly in the practice of experimental and non-mainstream cinema. At the crossroads of several disciplines―film, media, new media, media anthropology, visual arts, contemporary China area studies, and cultural studies--this book reveals the existence of a creative, humorous, but also socially and politically critical "China on video", which locates itself outside of the intellectual discourse surrounding both auteur cinema and digital art.

By describing smaller-screen movies, moviemaking and viewing as light realities, Voci points to their "insignificant" weight in terms of production costs, distribution size, profit gains, intellectual or artistic ambitions, but also their deep meaning in defining an alternative way of seeing and understanding the world. The author proposes that lightness is a concept that can usefully be deployed to describe the moving image, beyond the specificity of recent new media developments and which can, in fact, help us rethink previous cinematic practices in broad terms both spatially and temporally.

About this title

About the Author

Paola Voci is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago. Her area of research combines Chinese and film studies. She has published on Chinese cinema, documentary and other non-fiction film/videomaking in contemporary China and the media of the Chinese diaspora.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415814200
• ISBN 13: 9780415814201
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288