| As we explore these themes––extraterritoriality, temporality, auditory travels, identity––throughout the course, it might be useful to keep some of these questions in mind as you attempt to seek your own answers to them: What is the relationship between culture and political reality? Does “Chinese culture” mean the same thing to the people living in these various locales? Why have these films become classics, and what impact have the critical interventions of these filmmakers had on the Chinese-speaking world, if any? Are these preoccupations unique to Chinese societies? |
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| topic Discussion/Production |
| Discussion |
| Lecturing |
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| Written Presentation |
| Attendance |
| Oral Presentation |
| Assignment |
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| Week |
Course Content |
| Week 1 |
Introduction |
| Week 2 |
Whither Chinese-language cinema
Required Reading：
Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “Introduction: Mapping the Field of Chinese-Language Cinema”, in Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (eds), Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005, pp. 1-24.
Recommended Viewing：
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)
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| Week 3 |
Transnational Moving Images
Guest speaker |
| Week 4 |
Language and identity
Required Reading：
Rey Chow, “Autumn Hearts: Filming Feminine ‘Psychic Interiority’ in Song of the Exile,” Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. 2007. 85–124.
Recommended Viewing：
Song of the Exile (Ann Hui, 1990)
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| Week 5 |
Personal Histories
Required Reading：
Jerome Silbergeld, “Body Visible: In the Heat of the Sun (Yangguang canlan de rizi).” Body in Question: Image and Illusion in Two Chinese Films by Director Jiang Wen. Princeton, NJ: P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University in association with Princeton University Press, 2008.
Recommended Viewing：
In the Heat of the Sun (Jiang Wen, 1994).
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| Week 6 |
Auditory travels and globalization
Required Reading：
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 2008. 54-64; 275-287.
Recommended Viewing：
Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming Liang, 2003).
Scene analysis exercise: sight and sound
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| Week 7 |
Media and transmission
Required Reading：
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 2008. 138-166.
Ackbar Abbas, “Culture in a Space of Disappearance,” Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, University of Minnesota Press, 1997: 1-15.
Recommended Viewing：
Painted Faces (Mabel Cheung and Alex Ng, 1988)
Scene analysis exercise: mise-en-scene
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| Week 8 |
Intersections
Required Reading：
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 2008. 244-257.
Decade: Wong Kar-wai on “In The Mood For Love” (indiewire.com)
Recommended Viewing：
In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
Scene analysis exercise: editing
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| Week 9 |
Midterm assignment |
| Week 10 |
A “Sinophone” director
Required Reading：
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 2008. 257-286.
Recommended Viewing：
Sepet (Yasmin Ahmad, 2005)
Scene analysis exercise: editing
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| Week 11 |
Chinese-language Not Enough
Required Reading：
Song Hwee Lim, “15: The Singapore Failure Story, ‘Slanged Up’”, in Chris Berry (ed.), Chinese Films in Focus II. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, and London: BFI Publishing, 2008, pp. 9-16.
Recommended Viewing：
15(Royston Tan, 2003)
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| Week 12 |
Digital Poetics
Required Reading：
Song Hwee Lim, “Can Poetics Break Bricks?”, in Gary Bettinson and James Udden (eds.), The Poetics of Chinese Cinema. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 147-165.
Recommended Viewing：
Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002) |
| Week 13 |
Temporality
Required Reading：
Song Hwee Lim, “Domesticating Time: Gendered Temporalities in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumière”. Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 10, no. 1 (2016): 36-57.
Recommended Viewing：
Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003)
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| Week 14 |
Six Ways of Doing Film Studies
Required Reading：
林松輝，(2024)〈另一種「另一種電影」：論楊德昌《獨立時代》的文藝腔與電影性〉(Another Kind of “Another Kind of Cinema”: On Speech Affectation and the Cinematic in Edward Yang’s A Confucian Confusion)，《現代美術學報》(Journal of Taipei Fine Art Museum)，第47期，頁10-46。網路版：https://map.tfam.museum/content/JO0047_01
Recommended Viewing：
A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang, 1994)
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| Week 15 |
Class Presentation |
| Week 16 |
Essay Workshop |
| Week 17 |
Self-directed learning
New Year’s Holiday |
| Week 18 |
Essay Due |
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