[Commlist] New Book "Feng Xiaogang’s New Year Films:Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship"

New book


*Feng Xiaogang’s New Year Films:**Industry, Regulation, Humour and 
Authorship***

Qi Ai

Amsterdam University Press, 2025

*DESCRIPTION:*

This book offers not only an in-depth study of Feng Xiaogang as a 
cinematic auteur but also a comprehensive and informative discussion of 
the industrial transformation of mainstream Chinese cinema under 
party-state regulation from the 1990s to the 2010s. It initiatively 
defines the mainland New Year film as an event film, with full 
consideration of the history of the Chinese New Year film, the impact of 
the Hong Kong New Year film, the mainland government’s “holiday economy” 
policy, the forming of New Year film season, and other diachronic and 
synchronic conditions. Feng’s New Year films can be read as a product of 
the interactions among the film industry’s market-oriented reform, film 
regulation and popular culture production. This interaction pivots on 
rejuvenating the Chinese film industry and converting Chinese commercial 
filmmaking into a market-driven but government-monitored mode. One may 
compare Feng’s New Year filmmaking to a triangle, and the three 
perspectives this book addresses, namely industry reform, film 
regulation, and popular culture, form the three points of the triangle, 
with the triangle depicting Feng’s New Year filmmaking. When one point 
changes position, the shape of the triangle changes.

This book locates him not simply as a commercially and artistically 
successful auteur but also as a strategist who manages to achieve such 
success by his ability to negotiate governmental and market 
expectations.The negotiation facilitates his New Year filmmaking and 
dynamically affects the textual form of the resulting works. With 
approaches of “industry allegory”, “creative compliance”,and 
“/tiaokan/ humour”, Feng engages in this textual construction, through 
which he delivers his own interpretations of the Chinese film industry’s 
state-led commercialisation, cultural policy, film regulation, and even 
political campaigns, establishes his authorship and restores his 
creative authority. A new framework is consequently given to help 
identify cinematic authorship that changes with industry development and 
policy adjustments.


*CONTENTS:*

**

Chapter 1. Event Film and New Year Expectation

Chapter 2. Industry Allegory and State-led Commercialisation

Chapter 3. Film Regulation and Creative Compliance

Chapter 4. /Tiaokan /Humour and Popular Culture

Chapter 5. Auteur Status and Commercial Aesthetics

Conclusion

*AUTHOR:*

Qi Ai is a Lecturer in the School of Journalism and Communication at 
Shandong Normal University in China. He was a post-doctoral fellow at 
Shandong University and the visiting scholar at University of Nottingham 
Ningbo. He holds a Ph.D. in Film and Television Studies from the 
University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.


*RELEVANT WEBLINKS:*

More information about the book and order links:

https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463721950/feng-xiaogangs-new-year-films#toc 
<https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463721950/feng-xiaogangs-new-year-films#toc>


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