Movies on Paper? A Print Culture Perspective on Early Chinese Cinema

CEAS CHINA BROWN BAG SERIES

Nicolai Volland Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

This talk revisits the formation and popularization of Chinese cinematic discourse in the 1920s from the perspective of print culture. Based on a survey of some of the earliest Chinese films journals, including Yingxi shijie, Yingxi chunqiu, Dianying zhoubao, Volland argues that rather than being merely an element of an emerging broader film culture, the vibrant and sophisticated print culture of the Republican era played an essential role in the emergence of Chinese cinema. Volland will show how these movie magazines explored the world of film, proposed strategies of analysis and assessment, and debated criteria of appraisal, thus establishing and propagating the discursive rules and the critical language necessary to speak and write about film in Republican China.