Jason McGrath Chinese Film

Chinese Film

Realism and Convention from the Silent Era to the Digital Age

JASON M CGRATH

A tour de force chronicling the development of realism in Chinese cinema

The history of Chinese cinema is as long and complicated as the tumultuous history of China itself. Each Chinese cinematic era, whether the silent, the Communist, or the contemporary, has necessitated its own form in conversation with broader trends in politics and culture.

In Chinese Film, Jason McGrath tells this long and fascinating story by tracing the varied claims to cinematic realism made by Chinese filmmakers, officials, critics, and scholars. Understanding realism as a historical dynamic that is both enabled and mitigated by aesthetic conventions of the day, he analyzes it across six different types of claims: ontological, perceptual, fictional, social, prescriptive, and apophatic. Through this method, McGrath makes major claims not just about Chinese cinema but also about realism as an aesthetic form that negotiates between cultural conventions and the ever-evolving real. He comes to envision this as more than just a cinematic question, showing how the struggle for realism is central to the Chinese struggle for modernity.

Realism and Convention from the Silent Era to the Digital Age

JASON MCGRATH

FILM CHINESE

Jason McGrath is professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, where he is also on the faculty in Moving Image, Media, and Sound Studies. He is author of Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age.

FILM/ASIAN STUDIES

$30.00x £22.99 Paper ISBN: 978-1-5179-1403-5 $120.00xx £96.00 Cloth ISBN: 978-1-5179-1402-8 $30.00 Retail e-book ISBN: 978-1-4529-6858-2 JANUARY 424 pages 67 b&w illustrations 5 1/2 x 8 1/2