Women Directing Films: History, Cinematic Authorship, and Feminisms in Modern China

FAIN: FA-55354-10

Lingzhen Wang
Brown University (Providence, RI 02912-9100)

This book project studies eight important, mainland Chinese women directors and their films produced from 1950s-2007, exploring the complex relationship among history, feminisms, and Chinese cinema. The first part examines the emergence of the female authorship in socialist cinema, discussing the role socialist feminism played in ushering women into film production and women's own negotiations with the dominant socialist realism. The second part centers on the post-socialist era, analyzing both the continuous influence of socialist feminism and the introduction of contemporary Western feminisms. This part illustrates women's re-vision of their own agency and traces the formation of a personal mode of cinema. The third part centers on the tension and conflicts among women, feminism, and the market in a global capitalist age. It shows the fragmentation of feminism in the commercialization of culture and the dilemma women directors encounter in representing female desire in their films.