Writing people’s histories with lenses―a brief review of The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement
Li-Hsin KUO
[excerpts]
After the prolificacy in contemporary documentary film production in China since the 1990s, and a number of journal articles in which such documentary production and its phenomena are researched, we finally have a relatively thorough anthology on studies of new documentary movement in China for the English-speaking world. The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (henceforth as The Movement) is the first of its kind, co-edited by two of the well-known Western scholars specialized in Chinese cinema, culture and politics, Chris Berry and Lisa Rofel, as well as by Lu Xinyu, a key scholar in this field in China. The timely publication of it signals an arrival of maturity in the studies of this crucial visual medium in Chinese setting, which may generate immensely significant values both academically and politically.
Author’s biography
Kuo, Li-Hsin earns his PhD in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is Associate Professor at College of Communication, National Chengchi University in Taiwan. His recent writing on documentary film is ‘Sentimentalism and the phenomenon of inward-looking: a critical analysis of mainstream Taiwanese documentary’, to be published in Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries, Edited by Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Tze-lan Sang, London: Routledge.