[Commlist] New Book: Chinese Independent Cinema—Past, Present, and a Questionable Future

  On behalf of the Chinese Independent Film Archive, Luke Robinson is 
very happy to
  announce a new publication: /Chinese Independent Cinema: //Past,
  Present, and a Questionable Future/, edited by Chris Berry, Luke
  Robinson, Sabrina Qiong Yu, and Lydia Wu (Amsterdam University Press,
  2025).

Independent cinema in China is not only made outside the commercial 
system but also without being submitted for censorship. We know that for 
several decades it has been the crucible out of which China’s most 
exciting new films have flowed. The essays in this volume interrogate 
what else we think we know. Did it really start with Wu Wenguang and 
Bumming in Beijing in 1990, or can its roots be traced back much 
earlier? What are its aesthetics? And its ethics, including of gender 
and class? Where do audiences watch these films in China and how do they 
circulate? And, since the 2017 Film Law defined uncensored films as 
illegal, is independent Chinese cinema still alive? What does it mean 
today? And does it have a future? The essays in this anthology—many by 
exciting new scholars—explore these urgent questions.

Contents:

Introduction – Sabrina Qiong Yu, Chris Berry, Luke Robinson, and Lydia Wu
Genealogies
Chapter 1. The Soil and the Scar: A Genealogy of Photography and 
Documentary in Post-Mao China – Zoe Meng Jiang
Chapter 2. Video Relics: Hu Jie and the Official Style – Maximilian Berwald
Ethics and Aesthetics
Chapter 3. Hu Bo’s Ethics of Realism – Cecília Mello
Chapter 4. The Filmmaker as Feminist – Jinyan Zeng
Chapter 5. Of Found Objects and Projected Things: The Relational Field 
in Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks and Ma Li’s Born in Beijing – Yün Peng
Beside the Screen: Independent Cinema as Social Practice
Chapter 6. In Dependence and in Relation: A Relational Sociological 
Approach to Chinese Independent Cinema – Seio Nakajima
Chapter 7. Distribution and Exhibition of Independent Film in China: 
Informal Infrastructure and Its Affordances – Chris Berry, Luke 
Robinson, and Sabrina Qiong Yu
Chapter 8. Mediating the New Alternative Film Culture: An Ethnographic 
Study of Post-Independent Exhibition Practices Since 2017 – Xiang Fan
Chapter 9. Three Modes of Independent Creative Documentary Production 
and the Rise of the Industrial Mode – Kiki Tianqi Yu
Community and Engagement
Chapter 10. Cinematic Fabulation: Trans Representation in Miss Jin Xing 
– Hongwei Bao
Chapter 11. Village Film and Place-Based Film Archive: Towards an 
Ecological and Archival Chinese Independent Documentary – Zimu Zhang
Chapter 12. The Ethic of Collaboration: Rethinking Chinese Independent 
Cinema’s Engagement with Grassroots Creativity – Kaiyang Xu

The volume is currently available for purchase via the press website, 
with a 20% discount code “AUP20”, valid until30^thJune 2025:

https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048555406/chinese-independent-cinema


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