Chinese Independent Animation

Download or read book Chinese Independent Animation written by Wenhai Zhou and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of ‘independent’ animation opens up a quietly subversive and vibrant dimension of contemporary Chinese culture which, hitherto, has not received as much attention as dissident art or political activism. Scholarly interest in Chinese animation has increased over the last decade, with attention paid to the conventional media circle of production, distribution and consumption. The ‘independent’ sector has been largely ignored however, until now. By focusing on distinctive independent artists like Pisan and Lei Lei, and situating their work within the present day media ecology, the author examines the relationship between the genre and the sociocultural transformation of contemporary China. Animation, the author argues, has a special significance, as the nature of the animation text is itself multilayered and given to multiple interpretations and avenues of engagement. Through an examination of the affordances of this ‘independent’ media entity, the author explores how this multifaceted cultural form reveals ambiguities that parallel contradictions in art and society. In so doing, independent animation provides a convenient ‘mirror’ for examining how recent social upheavals have been negotiated, and how certain practitioners have found effective ways for discussing the post-Socialist reality within the current political configuration.

Download or read book Chinese Animation, Creative Industries, and Digital Culture written by Weihua Wu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the development of the Chinese animation film industry from the beginning of China’s reform process up to the present. It discusses above all the relationship between the communist state’s policies to stimulate "creative industries", concepts of creativity and aesthetics, and the creation and maintenance , through changing circumstances, of a national style by Chinese animators. The book also examines the relationship between Chinese animation, changing technologies including the rise first of television and then of digital media, and youth culture, demonstrating the importance of Chinese animation in Chinese youth culture in the digital age.

Download or read book Chinese Animation written by Rolf Giesen and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-12-19 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an output of more than 250,000 minutes annually, and with roughly 5,000 producers and production units, the Chinese are leading the field of animated films. Although it is almost impossible to completely cover 90 years of filmmaking, this book provides a comprehensible introduction to the industry's infancy, its Golden Age (Shanghai Animation Film Studio) and today's Chinese animation (in feature films, television series and student films). There are classics such as Princess Iron Fan (made at the time of the Japanese occupation) and the color Havoc in Heaven, both starring the Monkey King Sun Wukong, as well as countless TV stars (Blue Cat, Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf) and many almost unknown works by young filmmakers who are not focusing on an audience of children (like most of the industry output).

Download or read book DV-Made China written by Zhen Zhang and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-05-31 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1990s post-Reform China, a growing number of people armed with video cameras poured out upon the Chinese landscape to both observe and contribute to the social changes then underway. Happening upon the crucial platform of an older independent film movement, this digital turn has given us a "DV China" that includes film and media communities across different social strata and disenfranchised groups, including ethnic and religious minorities and LGBTQ communities. DV-Made China takes stock of these phenomena by surveying the social and cultural landscape of grassroots and alternative cinema practices after the digital turn around the beginning of the new century. The volume shows how Chinese independent, amateur, and activist filmmakers energize the tension between old and new media, performance and representation, fiction and non-fiction, art and politics, China and the world. Essays by scholars in cinema and media studies, anthropology, history, Asian and Tibetan studies bring innovative interdisciplinary methodologies to critically expand upon existing scholarship on contemporary Chinese independent documentary. Their inquiries then extend to narrative feature, activist video, animation, and other digital hybrids. At every turn, the book confronts digital ironies: On the one hand, its portability facilitates forms of radically private film production and audience habits of small-screen consumption. Yet it also simultaneously links up makers and consumers, curators and censors allowing for speedier circulation, more discussion, and quicker formations of public political and aesthetic discourses. DV-Made China introduces new frameworks in a Chinese setting that range from aesthetics to ethical activism, from digital shooting and editing techniques to the politics of film circulation in festivals and online. Politics, the authors urge, travels along paths of aesthetic excitement, and aesthetic choices, conversely, always bear ethical consequences. The films, their makers, their audiences and their distributional pathways all harbor implications for social change that are closely intertwined with the fate of media culture in the new century of a world that both contains and is influenced by China.

Download or read book Animation in China written by Sean Macdonald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the turn of the 21st century, animation production has grown to thousands of hours a year in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Despite this, and unlike American blockbuster productions and the diverse genres of Japanese anime, much animation from the PRC remains relatively unknown. This book is an historical and theoretical study of animation in the PRC. Although the Wan Brothers produced the first feature length animated film in 1941, the industry as we know it today truly began in the 1950s at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS), which remained the sole animation studio until the 1980s. Considering animation in China as a convergence of the institutions of education, fine arts, literature, popular culture, and film, the book takes comparative approaches that link SAFS animation to contemporary cultural production including American and Japanese animation, Pop Art, and mass media theory. Through readings of classic films such as Princess Iron Fan, Uproar in Heaven, Princess Peacock, and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, this study represents a revisionist history of animation in the PRC as a form of "postmodernism with Chinese characteristics." As a theoretical exploration of animation in the People’s Republic of China, this book will appeal greatly to students and scholars of animation, film studies, Chinese studies, cultural studies, political and cultural theory.

Download or read book Street of Eternal Happiness written by Rob Schmitz and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unforgettable portrait of individuals who hope, struggle, and grow along a single street cutting through the heart of Shanghai, from one of the most acclaimed broadcast journalists reporting on China. Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city’s sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies. There’s Zhao, whose path from factory floor to shopkeeper is sidetracked by her desperate measures to ensure a better future for her sons. Down the street lives Auntie Fu, a fervent capitalist forever trying to improve herself with religion and get-rich-quick schemes while keeping her skeptical husband at bay. Up a flight of stairs, musician and café owner CK sets up shop to attract young dreamers like himself, but learns he’s searching for something more. As Schmitz becomes more involved in their lives, he makes surprising discoveries which untangle the complexities of modern China: A mysterious box of letters that serve as a portal to a family’s—and country’s—dark past, and an abandoned neighborhood where fates have been violently altered by unchecked power and greed. A tale of 21st-century China, Street of Eternal Happiness profiles China’s distinct generations through multifaceted characters who illuminate an enlightening, humorous, and at times heartrending journey along the winding road to the Chinese Dream. Each story adds another layer of humanity and texture to modern China, a tapestry also woven with Schmitz’s insight as a foreign correspondent. The result is an intimate and surprising portrait that dispenses with the tired stereotypes of a country we think we know, immersing us instead in the vivid stories of the people who make up one of the world’s most captivating cities.

Download or read book Chinese Animation and Socialism written by Daisy Yan Du and published by China Studies. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume on Chinese animation and socialism is the first in English that introduces the insider viewpoints of socialist animators at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in China. Although a few monographs have been published in English on Chinese animation, they are from the perspective of scholars rather than of the animators who personally worked on the films, as discussed in this volume. Featuring hidden histories and names behind the scenes, precious photos, and commentary on rarely seen animated films, this book is a timely and useful reference book for researchers, students, animators, and fans interested in Chinese and even world animation. This book originated from the Animators' Roundtable Forum (April 2017 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), organized by the Association for Chinese Animation Studies"--