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'My' Self on Camera
First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China
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Book Presentation:
An exploration of first person narrative documentary in China’s post-Mao era
‘My’ Self on Camera is the first book to explore first person narrative documentary in China’s post-Mao era. Since the emergence of the individual as an ever more important social figure in China, this mode of independent filmmaking and cultural practice has become increasingly significant. Combining the approach of cultural ethnography, interviews, and textual analysis of selected films, this study examines the motivations, key aesthetic features and ethical tensions of presenting the self on camera, as well as the socio-political, cultural and technical conditions surrounding its practice. This book problematises how the sense of self and subjectivities are understood in contemporary China, and provides illuminating new insights on the changing notion of the individual through cinema.
About the Author:
Kiki Tianqi Yu is a filmmaker, scholar, and film curator. Her work includes feature documentary film China’s van Goghs (2016), and edited volume China’s iGeneration (2014). She is Lecturer in Film Practice at Queen Mary University of London.
Press Reviews:
Understanding first person filmmaking in China as always already political, this study breaks new ground in considering the particularities of this personal form of filmmaking as it emerges in the late 20th Century China. With in-depth case studies written by a scholar who is also a filmmaker, this study is a welcome reassessment of the predominantly western-oriented scholarship on subjective/autobiographical/first person film. Tianqi Yu’s book is a major contribution to the field.– Alisa Lebow, University of Sussex
This exciting book reveals that China’s first-person documentary boom takes individualism not as a retreat from but rather as the route to social and political engagement.– Chris Berry, King's College London
With exhilarating brio, My 'Self' on Camera counters Eurocentric first person documentary. It locates Chinese "I" cinemas within the Post Mao period, decollectivization, and marketization. A stirring account of little known films, it insists the Chinese "I" is multiple, conflicted, and relational, traversing between public and private, home and human rights.– Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ithaca College
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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