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All lectures are free but ticketed. Tickets are available from Edinburgh Filmhouse box office and on the door.

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Cultural Modernity in 1930s Shanghai
Dr. Paul Bailey, University of Edinburgh

As the most sophisticated and ‘modern’ urban centre in China, Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s came to be known in the West as the “Paris of the East”. Yet, as a ‘semi-colonial’ city, Shanghai was a city of competing political jurisdictions; it was also a city of underworld gangs in cahoots with public authorities, and a growing proletariat. This talk will discuss the contradictory features of Shanghai as a site of material modernity and new forms of visual culture (such as the cinema), criminality, and an exploited factory work force. It will also point to the nostalgia for 1930s Shanghai that has gripped contemporary Chinese filmmakers such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou.

9th March / 13:00-13:30
RAEBURN ROOM, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

The female star in early Shanghai Cinema
Prof. Natascha Gentz, University of Edinburgh

A main characteristic of the Shanghai Film industry of the 1930s is its mass production of female film stars, compared to the number of popular male leads. Chinese actresses held a particular position in the new and growing production of national films, and their roles, aspirations and public claims differed from the mainly sexualised “fashionable femininity” exhibited by their contemporary Hollywood stars. The highly politically charged film industry produced actresses as “social actors” and sites for the articulation of divergent positions on old and new gender roles, new urbanity, modernity and nationalism or cultural colonisation. Such public discourses mainly neglected the separation of cinematic art and daily lives of those actresses, and Ruan Lingyu is a prominent example for the potential consequences if such a distinction is not made. Her prominent suicide was yet a conventional choice for escaping her predicament, and by this she became the classic example for “the tragic life” of actresses suppressed by the patriarchal representational system. But there were other choices and role models of actresses, albeit contested, which reveals the active role women have played in shaping the new film industry beyond reception and consumption. These examples reveal constant negotiations of the new female stars between different expectations, claims and demands for “new women” in public, articulated through a highly commercialised culture, radicalised literature and widening social sphere.

9th March / 16:00-16:30
RAEBURN ROOM, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

‘The courage to live’: Women, morality and humanism in Fei Mu’s ‘Spring in a Small Town’
Dr. Susan Daruvala, University of Cambridge

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Fei Mu's 1948 masterpiece, set in the ruins of post-war China is a powerful meditation on human relationships and the conflict between love and duty. When released it was hailed for its lyricism and cinematic virtuosity, but also criticized as a decadent reflection on the weakness of a bourgeois intellectual. Although it can be read as socially conservative, the acute psychological exploration of Yuwen, the woman protagonist in a love triangle contradicts this interpretation. The talk will give an overview of Fei Mu's ideas about film practice and suggest how his daring techniques illuminate his humanism. Parallels will be drawn with David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) a British depiction of passion and restraint, to suggest the universality of some of the underlying moral questions confronting different societies with different class and political structures in the post-war world.

11th March / 13:00-13:30
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

War and Revolution in China 1937-1949
Dr. Paul Bailey, University of Edinburgh

This talk will analyse the impact of World War Two on China, and the reasons for the ultimate victory of the Chinese Communist party over its principal rival, the Guomindang (Nationalist Party), in 1949. One of the factors behind communist success was the widespread disillusion with Guomindang rule in the cities, a phenomenon that was incisively highlighted in key films of the late 1940s such as Spring River Flows East (Dir. Cai Chusheng & Zheng Junli, 1947) and Crows and Sparrows (Dir. Zheng Junli, 1949).

11th March / 15:00-15:30
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Gender, Revolution and Modernity in Chinese Cinema
Dr. Paul Bailey, University of Edinburgh

A focus on women’s lives and bodies in Chinese cinema as a way of exploring the lingering influences of tradition, the impact of political, socio-cultural and economic change, and the nature of Han Chinese modernity has been a pervasive feature since its beginnings. This has been especially apparent since the late 1970s. After a discussion of perhaps one of the first Chinese films to explore the ambivalent impact of modernizing change on women, New Woman (Dir. Cai Chusheng, 1935), the talk will focus on a selection of key films that problematise the relationship between the Chinese Communist party and peasant traditions (Yellow Earth), highlight the need for an honest reappraisal of past actions by party officials (Legend of Tianyun Mountain), examine the ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Ju Dou, The True Story of Qiu Ju), illustrate how the portrayal of ‘exotic’ ethnic minority women is meant to consolidate a Han Chinese male identity (Sacrificed Youth), and dissect the moral and spiritual emptiness of post-Mao market reforms (Ermo).

12th March / 11:30-12:00
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Guns, Socialist-Realism and Main Melodies:
Chinese Communist Films about the Sino-Japanese War
Dr. Julian Ward, University of Edinburgh

Much discussion of the Chinese cinema of the last twenty years has revolved around the highly charged question of whether filmmakers are producing their works for an international, rather than a domestic, audience. Such accusations could never be levelled at the many films about the Sino-Japanese War made in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. An examination of works such as The Urgent Letter (1954), Railroad Guerrillas (1956) and Land Mine Warfare (1962) provides an insight into the way in which all aspects of filmmaking were taken over by the state after the Communist Party of China assumed power in 1949. The films show how the Socialist Realist style was adopted wholesale in order to ensure that the events of a very recent, and deeply traumatic, war could be presented in a sanitised, politically acceptable way. At the same time, the films reveal glimpses of the social mores of pre-Cultural Revolution China, as well as a host of connections with the various campaigns and movements that dominated this crucial period of modern Chinese history.
The talk will conclude with reference to Zhang Side, a black and white film made in 2005 to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, which, while technically more advanced than the earlier films, nevertheless serves as an example of how mainstream,  “main-melody”, films are still used as vehicles for official propaganda.

12th March / 13:00-13:30
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

The Minimal and the Exotic: The Contrasting Worlds of Zhang Yimou
Prof. John Orr, University of Edinburgh

This lecture deals with one of mainland China’s most eminent Fifth Generation directors. It contrasts the use of narrative and mise-en-scene in Zhang Yimou’s historical melodramas such as Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern and Hero with his minimal humanist fables of contemporary life such as The Story of Qiu Ju, Not One Less, The Road Home and Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles.

12th March / 15:00-15:30
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Tragedy and Melodrama in Chinese Cinema
Prof. Natascha Gentz, University of Edinburgh

The genre of “Melodrama” has played a central role in characterizing Chinese Cinema and Asian Cinema in general. Throughout Chinese film history it has been a contested concept, whilst at the same time, there is hardly any agreement about its definition and components. In the presentation I will discuss different usages and applications of this term in various periods and their implications for a variety of interpretations of this concept. At the same time, we have to remind ourselves that there is no synonym for this word in the Chinese language and all modern terms we find for it are new inventions. As the term was originally applied to stage plays, the presentation will explore the generation of this concept in China in relation to its generic counterpart, the tragedy, which was introduced on Chinese stages before the advent of films. While melodrama saw its heydays in the 1930s and again in the 1980s, we might speak of a possible return of the tragic mode in recent dramatic and cinematic practice.

13th March / 11:30-12:00
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Non-action in action: martial arts, landscape and religious concepts in Chinese film
Prof. Joachim Gentz, University of Edinburgh

Arts and religious concepts have often been associated in Chinese tradition. In the realm of martial arts Buddhists often play a double role. On the one hand they appear as experts who, through special spiritual exercises, develop extraordinary worldly fighting techniques and skills, which are far superior to those of average fighters. On the other hand they are depicted as mysterious personalities who, through their way of life, have no definite identities; they live and practice in remote places and in landscapes in which superhuman forces dwell. Because they do not participate in social life, live outside the social order and follow own precepts and laws they are often associated with subversive realms. Through recourse to the history of Buddhism, its role in Chinese society, its conflict with Confucian and Daoist values and the pointing out of filmic uses of a specific Buddhist aesthetics the talk will explain how the traditional role of the Buddhist came to fit in the role of the literary archetype of the xia-fighter in the 20th century. Connected to the figure of the Buddhist fighter is the specific jianghu (lakes and rivers)-landscape which was invented in the 1920s and represents, like the Buddhist, an other-worldly and self-referential in-between realm, which provides a perfect aesthetic frame for the depiction of the abstract fight between good and evil.

13th March / 13:00-13:30
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

‘Heshang or the River Elegy’ (documentary / dir. Xia Jun, 1988)
Prof. Natascha Gentz, University of Edinburgh

When CCTV broadcasted the documentary River Elegy (Heshang) in June 1988 the television series caused immediate shockwaves throughout China. It was one of the most talked about topics among Chinese intellectuals as well as Western observers over years and is still debated as the Heshang-phenomenon long after its official ban in 1989.

River Elegy has little of which is pleasant reading to a Chinese patriot – it is proclaiming the death of traditional Chinese civilization and calling for a thorough Westernization;  it is analyzing Chinese history as a history of failures and lost opportunities, and it presents its arguments in a mixture of scholarship and inspired synthesis, history and allegory.
River Elegy polarized the political and intellectual arena. In China it was highly praised and strongly criticized. Top leadership members differed widely in their opinions as did intellectuals looking at it from academic or artistic angles. River Elegy was not only controversial because of inconvenient political messages, but also because their artistic representation.

During the day we will alternately look at film clips from all six series and discuss their content. We will hear about issues like the River Elegy’s position in China’s history of documentaries, the political background and controversy about the series, its suggestive style and language, and the issue of cultural critique and debate in contemporary China. As the series has never been subtitled or broadcasted outside China, it is a unique opportunity to catch a glance at one critical incident in Chinese documentary history.

14th March / 09:15-15:00
LANGUAGE AND HUMANITIES CENTRE,
DAVID HUME TOWER, GEORGE SQUARE

Xie Fei's ‘Black Snow’and ‘Women from the Lake of Scented Souls’: Men and Women getting by in post-Mao China
Dr. Julian Ward, University of Edinburgh

The festival is fortunate to be able to provide a rare opportunity to view two films by the celebrated director, and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, Xie Fei. Black Snow (1990) looks at the problem of the Lost Generation, those whose education had been disrupted by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, through the experience of an ex-con struggling to cope with the new Beijing, a city that has changed beyond recognition during his time in prison. In The Women from the Lake of Scented Souls (1993), a female entrepreneur in rural China, who goes all out to embrace the many opportunities offered by the economic reforms introduced after the death of Mao Zedong, comes up against the age-old conservatism which still holds sway in the vast Chinese hinterland. Viewed together, the two films present contrasting images of a country adjusting to a host of social and cultural changes and bear witness to Xie’s willingness to take on challenging subject matter.

15th March / 13:00-13:30
ELDER ROOM, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Style and Meaning in the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Prof. John Orr, University of Edinburgh

Often seen primarily as a Taiwanese formalist and innovator by Western critics, the social and political context of Hou’s films, and above all his sense of place are equally important in their development. This lecture establishes some of the key linkages between style and meaning in his cinema, looking in detail at City of Sadness, Good Men Good Women, and Three Times.

15th March / 15:00-15:30
ELDER ROOM, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

The role of the BFA in Chinese Cinema
Prof. Xie Fei, Beijing Film Academy

The Beijing Film Academy has played the key role in educating generations of Chinese film-makers including the very influential 5th Generation (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang). The exploration of the history of the Beijing Film Academy takes us through different periods in its history, highlighting cultural, political and social factors, which have shaped the Academy during last sixty years.

17th march / 13:00-13:30
ELDER ROOM, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinema
Dr. Song Hwee Lim, University of Exeter

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This talk offers an introduction to the representation of male homosexuality in Chinese cinemas within the last decade. It posits that representations of male homosexuality in Chinese film have been polyphonic and multifarious, posing a challenge to monolithic and essentialised constructions of both Chineseness and homosexuality. Given the artistic achievement and popularity of the films discussed here, the position of ‘celluloid comrades’ can no longer be ignored within both transnational Chinese and global queer cinemas. The talk also challenges the audience to reconceptualise these works in relation to global issues such as homosexuality and gay and lesbian politics, and their interaction with local conditions, agents, and audiences. Tracing the engendering conditions within the film industries of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, this talk situates the emergence of Chinese cinemas in the international scene since the 1980s, within a public sphere in which representations of marginal sexualities could flourish in its interstices. Examining the politics of representation in the age of multiculturalism through debates about the films, the talk asks for a rethinking of the limits and hegemony of gay liberationist discourse prevalent in current scholarship and film criticism. The talk will provide analyses of key films and auteurs, reading them within contexts as varied as premodern, transgender practice in Chinese theatre to postmodern, diasporic forms of sexualities.

18th march / 11:00-11:30
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

A Cinema of Enchantment: Contemporary Taiwanese Cinema
Prof. John Orr, University of Edinburgh

Forced to compete unequally with Hollywood for local audiences, this lecture looks at the various strategies of young Taiwanese filmmakers to attract viewers on the island and more generally in East Asia. Emphasis will be put on the uses of comedy, enchantment and documentary as key areas of effective low-budget filmmaking.

18th march / 12:30-13:30
PLAYFAIR LIBRARY, OLD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH