Chinese Ecocinema - In the Age of Environmental Challenge

This anthology is the first book-length study of China's ecosystem through the lens of cinema. Proposing "ecocinema" as a new critical framework, the volume collectively investigates a wide range of urgent topics in today's world: Chinese and Western epistemes of nature and humanity; the dialect of socialist modernization amid capitalist globalization; shifting configurations of space, locale, cityscape, and natural landscape; gender, religion, and ethnic cultures; as well as bioethics and environmental politics. The individual chapters zero in on diverse Chinese-language films by talented directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Jia Zhangke, Lou Ye, Fruit Chan, Wu Tianming, Tsai Mingliang, Li Yang, Feng Xiaogang, Zhang Yang, and Wang Xiaoshuai.

Sheldon Lu is professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis.