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Speaking in Images
Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers
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Book Presentation:
"I always compare filmmaking to cooking. Shooting is like buying the groceries. You buy all kinds of ingredients and the better ingredients you get, the better chance you have of making the movie you want."—Ang Lee, from Speaking in Images
Speaking in Images offers an engaging and rare collection of interviews with the directors who have changed the face of Chinese and international cinema. Michael Berry's discussions with such directors as Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Zhang Yimou (Hero), Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Stanley Kwan (Lan Yu), Tsai Ming-Liang (Vive l'Amour), Edward Yang (Yi Yi), and Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai) offer an eclectic and comprehensive portrait of contemporary Chinese cinema.
In interviews that capture each filmmaker's unique vision, the subjects discuss their formative years, the ideas and influences that shaped their work, film aesthetics, battles with censors and studios, the mingling of commercial and art film, and the future of Chinese cinema in a transnational context. Berry's introduction to the collection provides an overview of Chinese cinema in the second half of the twentieth century, placing the directors and their work in a wider historical and cultural context.
About the Author:
Michael Berry is assistant professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the translator of To Live by Yu Hua, Nanjing 1937: A Love Story by Ye Zhaoyan, and Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up by Chang Ta-Chun.
Press Reviews:
Speaking in Images, by Michael Berry, is engaging... It is refreshing to read artists talk about their work and medium. Malcom Parker, Pots.com
Berry's questions are intelligent... they illicit intelligent, detailed answers...useful to anyone seriously interested in world cinema...Essential. Choice
[Speaking in Images] should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the complexities and power of contemporary Chinese Film. Mingwei Song, China Review International
Speaking in Images is an excellent, even essential resource for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of these three important Chinese film industries. Ethan de Seife, Film International
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
> From the same author:
Divided Lenses (2017)
Screen Memories of War in East Asia
Dir. Michael Berry and Chiho Sawada
Subject: Genre > Historical films
Xiao Wu - Platform - Unknown Pleasures (2009)
Jia Zhangke's Hometown Trilogy
Subject: One Film > Pickpocket (Zhangke Jia), Platform, Unknown Pleasures
A History of Pain (2008)
Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film
> On a related topic:
Main Melody Films (2022)
Hong Kong Directors in Mainland China
The Cinema of Wang Bing (2023)
Chinese Documentary between History and Labor
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