Chinese Cinema: Tracing the Origins
This volume of essays is named Chinese Cinema: Tracing the Origins. As the name suggests, the aim is to discover the ancestral roots of Chinese motion pictures. ‘Origins of Chinese Cinema', the first part of the book, is a journey of methodically tracing the origins in question. Traversing from China's first movie to Hong Kong's first movie, the authors attempt to explicate and re-examine with historical data the behind-the-scene story and significance of how these works have become film history classics. The second part, ‘Industry and Art', provides a sketch of early Chinese motion pictures which surfaces while unearthing historical materials. It also ponders on the conceptual and artistic aspects of Chinese cinema in its primordial state. The CD which contains with the volume collects valuable resources–in Chinese is origins-related material, in English is information about film pioneer Benjamin Brodsky.
266 pages with reference materials in CD-ROM. Published in 2011. Priced at HK$105. All essays in Chinese. (Edited by Wong Ain-ling)
ISBN 978-962-8050-60-4
Contents
Foreword
I Origins of Chinese Cinema
China's First Feature? The Canonisation of The Difficult Couple
Huang Xuelei
Further Exploration of the Origins of Hong Kong Cinema – A Closer Look at Benjamin Brodsky, Van Velzer, the Lai Brothers, and Some Issues Arising from Research on Early Hong Kong Cinema
Law Kar
The Road to Unravelling the Mysteries Behind Hong Kong's Cinematic History
Zhou Chengren & Li Yizhuang
Stealing a Roast Duck: Researching the Myth
Wong Ain-ling & Grace Ng
The Fabulous Adventures of Benjamin Brodsky
Frank Bren
Making Connections: Benjamin Brodsky and Early Trans-Pacific Cinema Historiography
Ramona Curry
Anecdotes and Chinese Early Cinema: Renegotiating with Benjamin Brodsky
Liao Gene-fon
The (Possible) Circulation of Movie Industry Professionals Between Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, China and Indochina in the Late 19th Century
Lee Daw-ming
II Industry and Art
The Development of Early Chinese Cinema and Contemporary Nationalism – A Study Centred on Chinese Films of the 1920s
Wang Chaoguang
Early Chinese Film Companies: Business Models and Operational Problems
Lee Pui-tak
From Loanwords to Conceptual Models: The Application and Definition of ‘Wenyi' in Early Cinema
Emilie Yeh Yueh-yu
From Stage Aesthetic to Cinematic Aesthetic: The Evolution of Film Language in Early Chinese Cinema
Lo Wai-luk
Hou Yao, ‘Griffith Fever', and the Cultural Environment of Early Chinese Melodrama
Zhang Zhen
'Voiceover' and 'Soundtrack' in the Silent Film Era
Zhang Wei & Yan Jieqiong
The Brain as a Movie Theatre: A Construction of Modern Subjectivity in Zhou Shoujuan's Confidante
Chen Jianhua
Appendix: Reference materials in CD-ROM
Acknowledgements