Chinese Ecocinema

IIn coming decades, film will be one of the primary ways in which China adopts and expands ecological consciousness. This anthology is the first book-length study of China's ecosystem through the lens of cinema, in a historic moment of unparalleled environmental crises and destruction. 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; 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. 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 Ming-liang, Li Yang, Feng Xiaogang, Zhang Yang, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wang Bing, Ning Hao, Zhang Ming, Dai Sijie, Wanma Caidan, and Huo Jianqi. This book will interest scholars in film studies, environmental studies, ecocriticism, gender and cultural studies, Chinese studies, and globalization studies. --Sheldon Lu is professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis.-- -Jiayan Mi is assistant professor of literature, film, and critical theory at The College of New Jersey.--"A timely volume addressing issues of hydro-politics, eco-aesthetics, manufactured landscape, and bioethics, Chinese Ecocinema charts a new direction for film studies and establishes cinema as a vital force in renegotiating fractured relationships among nature, history, technology, and culture, as it gestures toward a place-bound ideal of planetarianism." -Yingjin Zhang, professor of Chinese literature at University of California, San Diego-