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New Chinese-Language Documentaries
Ethics, Subject and Place
by Kuei-fen Chiu and Yingjin Zhang
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Book Presentation:
Documentary filmmaking is one of the most vibrant areas of media activity in the Chinese world, with many independent filmmakers producing documentaries that deal with a range of sensitive socio-political problems, bringing to their work a strongly ethical approach. This book identifies notable similarities and crucial differences between new Chinese-language documentaries in mainland China and Taiwan. It outlines how documentary filmmaking has developed, contrasts independent documentaries with dominant official state productions, considers how independent documentary filmmakers go about their work, including the work of exhibiting their films and connecting with audiences, and discusses the content of their documentaries, showing how the filmmakers portray a wide range of subject matter regarding places and people, and how they deal with particular issues including the underprivileged, migrants and women in an ethical way. Throughout the book demonstrates how successful Chinese-language independent documentary filmmaking is, with many appearances at international film festivals and a growing number of award-winning titles.
About the authors:
Kuei-fen Chiu is Distinguished Professor of Taiwan Literature and Transnational Cultural Studies at National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of California, San Diego, USA and Visiting Chair Professor of Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Press Reviews:
‘This is a fascinating work in the nascent and fledgling field of Chinese-language documentary studies. The authors masterfully demonstrate the ways in which documentary filmmakers have engaged fundamental issues confronting China and Taiwan: history and politics, ethics and truth, reality and place, gender and subjectivity, migration and cosmopolitanism, exhibition and circulation.’ – Sheldon Lu, University of California at Davis, USA
‘In this pioneering, illuminating book, Chiu and Zhang compare the trajectory in the development and international reception of new documentaries from Mainland China and Taiwan, which surged suddenly in the 1990s, remaining quite active through the present. The authors also insightfully explore issues of ethics, subjectivities, and migration in the Chinese-language documentaries from both areas. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Chinese/Taiwan Studies and/or Cinema/Documentary Studies.’ – Daw-Ming Lee, Professor & Chair, Department of Filmmaking, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan
‘New Chinese-Language Documentaries is an exciting collaboration between a leading Taiwanese and a leading mainland-born scholar that extends English-language scholarship on Chinese-language documentary by encompassing Taiwanese productions and also coming bang up to date. In this deft and thorough book, Chiu and Zhang identify themes and topics such as gender, ethics, migration and how the films are distributed and exhibited to tease out commonalities and connections without ever losing sight of local specificity and difference. The result is both lucid and profound.’ – Chris Berry, King’s College London, UK
Chiu and Zhang flesh out this framework with insightful details from contemporary Chinese-speaking directors and their films. - B. M. McNeal, emerita, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
See the publisher website: Routledge
> From the same authors:
Taiwan Cinema (2019)
International Reception and Social Change
Dir. Kuei-fen Chiu, Ming-yeh Rawnsley and Gary Rawnsley
Screening China (2001)
Critical Interventions, Cinematic Reconfigurations, and the Transnational Imaginary in Contemporary Chinese Cinema
> On a related topic:
'My' Self on Camera (2018)
First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China
DV-Made China (2015)
Digital Subjects and Social Transformations After Independent Film
by Zhang Zhen and Angela Zito
Chinese Film in the Twenty-First Century (2025)
Movements, Genres, Intermedia
Dir. Corey Schultz and Cecília Mello
Romanian and Chinese Cinemas (2025)
Socialist Affect and Cultural Politics from Maoism to the New Waves
by Lucian Țion
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