MEDIA 743

Chinese Film Genres


Please note: this is archived course information from 2018 for MEDIA 743.

Description

Genre is an often-used concept in film studies and scholarship, providing ways to group together films that share similar styles, subjects, settings and/or themes. This course investigates genres in the dynamic and proliferating Chinese-language film.

The course mainly comprises three sections. It starts with youth film, a genre that began to draw academic attention only recently. This is followed by an examination of art film, the genre that has played a pivotal role in exposing Chinese-language film to the world cinema. The course concludes with a study of the cycles and trends of martial arts film, a genre usually considered to most saliently define Chinese cinema. The course approaches these three genres from the point of view of aesthetic traditions and conventions, industry and reception, as well as the broad sociocultural environment.

The course has a strong comparative perspective, covering three major film cultures in Chinese-language film: Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.

View the course syllabus

Availability 2018

Semester 2

Lecturer(s)

Coordinator(s) Associate Professor Xuelin Zhou

Points

MEDIA 743: 30 points

Restrictions

FTVMS 743