Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Social and Political Dynamics of Underground Filmmaking in China
Chapter 2: My Camera Doesn't Lie? Truth, Subjectivity, and Audience in Chinese Independent Film and Video
Chapter 3: A Scene beyond Our Line of Sight: Wu Wenguang and New Documentary Cinema's Politics of Independence
Chapter 4: "Every Man a Star": The Ambivalent Cult of Amateur Art in New Chinese Documentaries
Chapter 5: Independently Chinese: Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue, and Chinese Documentary
Chapter 6: Trapped Freedom and Localized Globalism
Chapter 7: Chinese Underground Films: Critical Views from China
Chapter 8: Film Clubs in Beijing: The Cultural Consumption of Chinese Independent Films

About the Author

Paul G. Pickowicz is professor of history at the University of California, San Diego. Yingjin Zhang is professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews

A welcome addition to scholarship on contemporary non-state Chinese filmmaking and its context both in China and globally. . . . This accessible book should appeal to a broad audience. Highly Recommended.
*CHOICE*

A useful collection, with a good balance of established and emerging academic talent amongst its authors. . . . The book offers a readable and stimulating set of thoughts on the meaning of independence in a post-Mao cinematic environment, on the continuities of style and narrational techniques across Chinese film history, and on the ways in which film articulates the delicate play between ideas of freedom and the realities of control in contemporary China.
*The China Journal*

Pickowicz and Zhang's volume is a timely publication, highly recommended not only for cinema classes but also for any discussion on the relationship between the state and the arts in contemporary China.
*China Quarterly, March 2008*

This excellent volume is a significant contribution to the existing film studies literature and has instantly become an important baseline study. It offers a variety of methodologies and perspectives in clear and accessible writing that persuasively challenge conventional wisdom. Although film books on China are becoming more common there are none available on this increasingly important subject. I will definitely use it in my classes.
*Stanley Rosen, University of Southern California*