Cinemas of the Sinosphere
Led by University of Exeter and King's College London, September 2019
King’s College London and the University of Exeter jointly organized and held the “Cinemas of the Sinosphere: Border Crossing in Chinese Cinemas” Conference between 20-22 September 2019. The conference began with a public film screening of significant Chinese language film The Crossing at Exeter’s Studio 47. The film was hosted on a Friday night and was free for the public to attend. The event was attended by a healthy audience made up of conference participants, University of Exeter students, and locals.
In accordance with the priority to build links with PRC universities, the opening keynote of the Cinemas of the Sinosphere Conference was given by Professor Lu Xinyu of East China Normal University. The closing keynote was given by Professor Song Hwee Lim of Chinese University of Hong Kong. 18 other papers were presented by leading academics in the field from across the UK and internationally.
The rapid transformation of cinema production, circulation, and consumption in the Chinese cultural world continues to challenge researchers, both empirically and conceptually. We used to recognize political and cultural diversity by speaking of “Chinese-language cinemas.” But economic globalization and political transformation means it is no longer tenable to speak of separate Hong Kong, Taiwan, and PRC industries. Border-crossing is everywhere. Furthermore, with the appearance inside the People’s Republic of non-Sinitic language cinema such as that of Pema Tseden, the world’s first Tibetan feature filmmaker, and the proliferation of Chinese filmmakers in the diaspora, even the idea of a shared language cannot be taken for granted. Joshua Vogel coined the term “Sinosphere” to characterize the East Asian world prior to the arrival of European and American gunboats. But can we repurpose it to capture the complexity of today’s border-crossing conditions?
What about the relationship between the PRC and Chinese speaking communities such as Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and diasporic Chinese populations which form a transborder assemblage driven by border-crossing forms? Or the textual, cultural and industrial interplay between the film industries operating in and across the Sinosphere? This event will explore how cinemas of the Sinosphere entail a range of border crossings, whether geographical, political, industrial, metaphorical, or aesthetic. Using the framework of geopolitical border-crossings, this event draws inspiration from the concept ‘glocalization’, first coined in 1992 by sociologist Roland Robertson, who suggests an alternative to globalisation that highlights the complexities of blurred boundaries between homogenous and heterogeneous local and global spaces.
- How can we adequately define Chinese-language and cultural cinema within or beyond the national borders
- What is the impact of the PRC’s new position on the local, regional and international cinema market?
- What does it mean to be a filmmaker/producer/distributor/academic working on the cinemas of the Sinosphere?
- In what ways do ideological, political and practical concerns related to the PRC effect filmmakers/artists working in the Sinosphere?
- What kinds of textual, cultural and industrial flows and challenges occur in exchanges between the PRC and the rest of the world?
- What new border-crossing narratives concerning identity (cultural, gender, age, sexuality) arise from this current climate?
- What border-crossing aesthetics and narratives have arisen in/out of the cinemas of the Sinosphere and what do they look like?
- How do these border-crossing aesthetics espouse, critique and/or theorise alternatives?
- In what ways do migrants, exiles and diasporic filmmakers/artists explore notions of ‘Chinese-ness’, ‘Taiwanese-ness’, ‘Hong Kong-ness’ and more in their work?
By bringing together key international scholars and filmmakers in the field of Chinese-language cinema and border-crossing challenges, exchanges and flows, the papers, screenings and debates of this 3-day event opened up new perspectives on this critical domain. As a result of the event, Chinese film has been identified as a shared research priority between KCL, Exeter, ECNU and CUHK.
Key highlights of the conference included:
- Opening keynote by Lu Xinyu (East China Normal University), “The Portrayal of the Images of the Ethnic Minorities in New China—Concurrently Responding to the ‘Rewriting of Chinese Cinematic History’”
- Closing keynote by Song Hwee Lim (Chinese University of Hong Kong), “Migrant Labour Cinema: Crossing Borders in East and Southeast Asia”
- Public film screening of 'The Crossing'
Following the conference, Professors Wang Yiman (UCSC) and Yomi Braester (UW, Seattle) have been invited by Routledge to edit a Handbook of Transnational Chinese Cinemas. This is expected to take up to 2-3 years to complete, and they plan to include as many of the film papers from the event as possible in the volume.
You can view the full Cinemas of the Sinosphere programme here
