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June 29, 2022
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Digital technology has ushered in the era of immersive movies. These developments have generated new requirements in performance esthetics that are detailed below. For one example, there are new demands for certain types of exaggeration and embellishment as well as more romance and pretense in documentary-style performances. There is also demand for more stylized and cartoonish performance formats. These performances have to be accurate, adequate, and to the point. Emotions should be expressed layer by layer, unrolling smoothly and delicately throughout the performance. Training in non-physical performances should be added to green- and blue-screen performance training. In solo performances without partners, actors and actresses should dramatically characterize their roles and consciousness when acting in the “void” of the studio. The digital era has strengthened attention, comprehension, emotions, etc. as performance attributes. The interaction between film performances and digital technology has contributed to the integration of Chinese performance discourse with the international discourse. Together, these factors have constructed a new type of performance esthetics in Chinese films.
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June 28, 2022
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Since the 21st century, great changes have taken place in film co-productions between Hong Kong and the mainland and local films in Hong Kong. Since the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003 between the two regions, co-production between Hong Kong and the mainland moved from a state of maladjustment to mutual exchange and integration. However, a crisis of narrative homogenization arose around 2010, but this situation was remedied by anti-homogenization efforts through adding films of suspense genre. Around 2015, a “new mainstream blockbuster” connecting the performance of mainland mainstream values and esthetics emerged in co-productions, successfully carrying out a mainland replacement of extant blockbusters that commonly featured Hong Kong-style humanistic values and esthetics. Hong Kong local films are also undergoing esthetic evolution in the context of the cultural conservation of Hong Kong people. First, a return can be witnessed to classic “Hong Kong’s flavor” films such as gangster and ghost films, inheriting and innovating the traditional “Hong Kong’s flavor” esthetic. Secondly, we can observe Hong Kong society and its changing history from a cultural perspective through a consideration of the changing film esthetic. After many changes, Hong Kong films have entered a new esthetic form.
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June 23, 2022
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One of the particular characteristics of Chinese films is that they are based on the unique sources of Chinese cultural thought. This article examines the main spiritual ideas of traditional Chinese culture through the lens of the three relationships between heaven and man, humans and other humans, and man and himself. It explores how Chinese films made in different cultural contexts and historical backgrounds have expressed the spirit of Chinese culture through both inheritance and transformation. We approach this issue by focusing on expressions of the traditional concepts of “the unity of man and heaven,” “vigor and promise,” “balanced harmony and the golden mean,” and “the unity of body and mind.”
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June 23, 2022
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June 23, 2022
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The significance of The Battle at Lake Changjin (Changjinhu, 2020) arguably lies in its shaping of a national aesthetic paradigm for Chinese blockbusters. This is mainly reflected in its creation of a panoramic film structure, constructing a solemn yet generous aesthetic style, forming the image of Chinese heroes, casting a consciousness between family and country, and rewriting historical justice through an aestheticized depiction. Behind the film’s latest success at the box office lies the enlightenment in Chinese blockbusters’ exploration of a national aesthetic paradigm: Chinese blockbusters need to firmly progress through this newly developed national-image aesthetic paradigm and continue exploring diverse aesthetic styles.
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June 17, 2022
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This paper discusses the value and significance of classic film rereleases in Chinese movie theaters in the post-pandemic era. From the perspectives of rereading standards, collective memory, and emotional identity, the rerelease of classic films is a way to pursue the spiritual and cultural continuity of human beings in an open-ended dimension of history. In considering the rerelease of classic films in Chinese movie theaters in the post-pandemic era, we should not only systematically study internal demands such as content and value judgment, but also analyze external factors such as the development of the film industry and evolutions in audience demand, so as to promote the sustainable development of rerelease mechanisms for Chinese films.
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June 10, 2022
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This study sheds new light on Feng Xiaogang, one of China’s most successful film directors, through an investigation of how Personal Tailor (2013) engages with the guiding rhetoric and ideals underpinning the “Chinese Dream”. The authors demonstrate how the hybrid political–commercial–artistic critique of the Chinese Dream in Personal Tailor offers poignant commentary on China’s quest for national rejuvenation during a period when China continues to struggle with increasing social and economic inequalities. By foregrounding these complex tensions between political and economic rationalism, and their intersections with an imagined nostalgia as a key story-telling trope, this study shows how Feng and Personal Tailor are expanding the boundaries of contemporary Chinese cinema in a new era of globalized commercial culture.
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May 16, 2022
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In the 1990s, China’s northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform engineered by Deng Xiaoping as part of the “Reform and Opening-up Policy,” which resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some 30 million blue-collar workers being laid off. 20 years after the reform, China’s northeast, once among the most urbanized regions in the country, has effectively become China’s “Rust Belt.” This article examines the cinematic representations of China’s Rust Belt, specifically in China’s northeast, arguing that cinema plays a crucial role in both capturing and interrogating the emergence of new urban spaces and urban subjects amidst the spatial and ideological reorientations of the reform era. It also investigates the ways in which cinematic representations, through a shifting “system of symbols,” mediate the contradictions in the production of urban spaces, cultural norms, and social identities.