China Studies Centre, University of Sydney
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm, Tuesday 9 October 2018
Room 310, Old Teacher’s College, University of Sydney
Emerging in the late 1980s and flourishing in past decades, independent documentary cinema has been one of the most vibrant spheres of artistic expression in China today. In this seminar, we examine how these films contend history, register subaltern experiences, engage with issues of gender, ethnicity and class, and build new communities of testimony and activism to foster social change. Clips from key films will be shown during the seminar. Discussions centre on documentary aesthetics, politics and ethics. Participants will also receive a short list of recommended readings, and are encouraged to read the texts before the seminar.
About the speaker:
Dr Ying Qian is an assistant professor in Chinese cinema and media studies at Columbia University and visiting fellow at the China Studies Centre. Her research interests include film and media theories and practices, documentary cinema, and global histories and imaginaries of revolution and post-socialism. She has published widely in academic journals and is currently completing a book entitled Visionary Realities: Documentary Cinema in Revolutionary China, which takes documentary aesthetics and epistemology as a prism to investigate intertwined histories of media practice, industrial modernity and revolutionary politics. She received her PhD from Harvard University, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National University, and has been a filmmaker, critic and film programmer.