Instructor: Rujie Wang

Office: Kauke 203

Phone: 263-2438

Email: rwang@wooster.edu

Films to be viewed (All or most of the films have been put on closed reserve in the library and available, either in VHS, DVD or VCD format, for viewing throughout the semester. Although group screenings are scheduled for Wednesday and Sunday evenings at 7-9 p.m. in Kauke 244, but feel free to view these films alone or with your classmates at your own convenience. This is because that most films require more than one viewing and that your reviews depend very much on your thorough familiarity with plot and characterization. In the final exam, you are expected to identify film clips and elaborate on their significance. To find out who's who in each of the following films scheduled for screening, please click here.

1. Blind Shaft (Li Yang)
2. Cell Phone (Feng Xiaogang)
3. Chinese Box (Wayne Wang)
4. Comrades, Almost A Love Story (Peter Chan)
5. Drifters (Wang Xiaoshuai)
6. Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee)
7. Elephant and Fish (Yu Li)
8. Ermo (Zhou Xiaowen)
9. Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige)
10. Getting Home (Zhang Yang)
11. Happy Together (Kar-Wai Wong)
12. Happy Times (Zhang Yimou)
13. Incense (Ning Hao)
14. Not One Less (Zhang Yimou)
15. Nuan (Huo Jianqi)
16. Peacock (Gu Changwei)
17. Postmen in the Mountains (Huo Jianqi)
18. Pretty Big Feet (Yang Yazhou)
19. Qing Hong (Wang Xiaoshui)
20. Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles (Zhang Yimou)
21. Shower (Zhang Yang)
22. Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
23. Story of Qiu Ju (Zhang Yimou)
24. Suzhou River (Lou Ye)
25. Time to Live A Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
26. To Live (Zhang Yimou)
27. Together (Chen Kaige)
28. Vive L'amour (Ming-liang Tsai)
29. Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee)
30. World (Jia Zhangke)
31. World without Thieves (Feng Xiaogang)
32. You and Me (Liwen Ma)
33. Zhou Yu's Train (Zhou Sun)

For criticism and reviews of these films, click here.

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COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING:

• Attendance and participation are mandatory, but 10% extra for those who have 5 or less absences.
• 10 one-page film reviews, 50%. Single space, 12-point font, one full page, with only your name and the title on top; it's okay if you go over one page a little. Their due dates are indicated on the schedule below. The review is an exercise of your analytical and interpretive skills. When writing your review, assume that your reader has seen the movie you are discussing. A film review needs to be substantive; it is NOT a plot summary. As an author and critic, you need to discuss what the director is doing rather than what the characters are doing. You need to be aware of the need to organize your fragmented and random thoughts into a coherent thesis or argument connecting all your ideas logically together. A review is your interpretation of the film by focusing on one of its central ideas rather than on several aspects of the film. Every time you introduce a detail or discuss a scene from the movie, some significance has to be attributed to it by way of analysis or interpretation. You need to write formally instead of the way you speak; and you need to proofread to eliminate typos and syntactical errors. 10 points are deducted if your review does not have a title that sums up your review (and more meaningful than "the review of xyz"). References to secondary readings by critics are not necessary but greatly encouraged if their interpretations and perspectives influence your take on a certain film. Submit your review as Word file and email attachment to be published in Chinese Film Review website. Always refer to Corrigan's A Short Guide to Writing about Film if you are not clear about what you are supposed to do.
• Two multiple choice tests on reading and viewing assignments, 20%. These tests also cover the content of classroom and email discussions. Because these tests include suggested movies (with an asterisk) either by the same director or concerning the same theme, they are 120% each; don't feel bad if you did not get all the answers right; you are not supposed to. Higher scores do help your course grade; so do watch them if and when you have time.
• Final Exam, identify film clips and answer take-home essay questions. 20%.

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REQUIRED TEXTS:

• Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing about Film, sixth edition. (SGWF); Pearson Longman: 2007.
• Lu, Sheldon. Transnational Chinese Cinemas (TCC). University of Hawaii Press, 1998 and China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (CTVGP), stanford University Press, 2001
• Nick Browne, Paul Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack, esther Yau, ed. New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics (NCCFIP).Cambridge University, 1994.
• Kwok-kon Tam and Wimal Dissanayake. New Chinese Cinema (NCC), Oxford University Press,1998

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TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

DATE	CLASS DISCUSSION	READING & VIEWING HOMEWORK
Themes and Methods
8/28	Introduction to cultural and theoretical issues; guidelines on writing about film; excerpts from Image-Music-Text by Roland Barthes, pp.15-51, pp.79-124	Lu, (TCC) pp.1-26; and (CTVGP) pp.1-28; "If China Can Say No, Can China Make Movies? Or Do Movies Make China?" by Chris Berry, pp. 159-177; article by Tam and Dissanayake entitled "Chinese Cinema: Lines of Development" pp.1-10, also read Both Articles By Sheldon Lu: China, Transnational Visuality... and Dialect and Modernity...; Shu Mei-Shi's Visuality and Identity: Sinopohone Articulations Across the Pacific
8/30	Introduction to the foci, perspectives, and approaches of Lu, Zhang, Chow, Berry, Mulvey, Freud, Jung (primitivism), Goldmann, Jameson, and Lukasc	Read "Chen Kaige: Steps Toward a Personal Cinema" by Tam and Dissanayake; "The concubine and the figure of history" by Wendy Larson in (TCC) pp.331-343; read Tang Yuankai, pp.58-61, "The Fifth-Generation Film Makers" "History Lessons" by Pauline Chen, pp.85-7; read "Farewell My Concubine": History, Melodrama, and Ideology in Contemporary Pan-Chinese Cinema and Farewell My Concubine and its Nativist Critics
Film as History and Memory
9/4	Farewell My Concubine, directed by Chen Kaige	Read article "We endure, therefore we are: survival, governance, and Zhang Yimou's To Live" by Chow and article by Wang entitled "To Live Beyond Good and Evil" Asian Cinema, vol. 12 No.1, 2001; (SGWF) pp.1-17,
9/6	To Live, directed by Zhang Yimou	Lu, (TCC) pp.105-133; historic background of the Cultural Revolution; Historic background of Great Leap Forward; read Chow (PP) pp. 142-202, read Peacock Review by Derek Elley
9/11	Peacock, directed by Gu Changwei, and Shanghai Dreams*, directed by Wang Xiaoshuai; first review due	Lu, (TCC) pp.139-68; View A Time To Live and A Time To Die; read "The Ideology of Initiation: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien" by William Tay in (NCCFIP) pp.151-9; read "Hou Hsiao-hsien: Critical encounters with memory and history" by Tam and Dissanayake, and "Cinema with a roof over its head" by Kent Jones;
9/13	Time To Live and A Time To Die; directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien	Mock Test 1; read encyclopedic entry to primitivism; watch Postmen in the Mountain (and Nuan) directed by Huo Jianqi, Read Wendy Larson's He Yi's The Postmen: The Workspace of a New Age Maoist
China (Rural)
9/18	Postmen in the Mountains (and Nuan*), directed by Huo Jianqi; second review due	Chow (PP) pp.4-51
9/21	Not One Less (and Ride Alone for Thousands of Miles*), directed by Zhang Yimou on the theme of the individual in community	Chow (PP) pp.142-202, read a review of Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles; also a review of Pretty Big Feet
9/26	Pretty Big Feet, directed by Yang Yazhou	"Zhang Yimou: Dramas of Desire and the Power of the Image" by Tam and Dissanayake, pp.23-34; article "The Body of the Condemned" by Michel Foucault; read a review of Qiu Ju
9/28	The Story of Qiu Ju, directed by Zhang Yimou; discuss Michel Foucault's article on penal ceremony and modernity; third review due	View Ermo directed by Zhou Xiaowen; read "What Will Become of Us if We Don't Stop?" Ermo's China and the End of Globilization, read "Ermo, Televisuality, capital and the global village" by Ciecko/Lu
10/2	Ermo, directed by Zhou Xiaowen, and Tu Ya's Wedding*, directed by Wang Quan-an on women and traditional family values	"Introduction to the Probelms of a Sociology of the Novel" by Lucien Goldmann, pp.1-15, read a review of Blind Shaft
10/4	Blind Shaft, directed by Li Yang and KeKeXiLi*, directed by Lu Chuan on the theme of capitalism and greed; fourth review due	Jung The Undiscovered Self pp.3-39; Modern Man in Search of A Soul pp.95-114; Mock Test 1;
10/09	Incense, directed by Hao Ning	mock test I; mock test II; mock test III; mock test IV; mock test V
10/11	Test on assignments and discussions	Jung The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature pp.84-105; Wednesday evening screening The World or/and Still Life directed by Zhangke Jia; read a review of The World, read Interview with Jia Zhangke and a Review of Still Life
China (Urban)
10/18	The World and Still Life*, directed by Jia Zhangke; fifth review due	read New York Times Still Life Review; interview of Zhang Yimou by Jiao Xiongping, 1988, pp.3-11; read Happy Times Review
10/23	Happy Times, directed by Zhang Yimou, and Getting Home*, directed by Zhang Yang) on urban loneliness	Read "The Theory of the Novel" by Georg Lukacs, pp. 29-39, 56-69; read a review of Together; mock test VI; mock test VII
10/25	Together, directed by Chen kaige; sixth review due	Article by Nick Browne entitled "Society and Sujectivity: on the political economy of Chinese melodrama" pp.40-56; read review of Shower
10/30	Shower directed by Zhang Yang and You and Me* directed by Ma Liwen, on generational gap and the loss of small scape human community	Rview Getting Home film, directed by Zhang Yang; Read two reviews of Zhou Yu's Train: review 1, review 2; "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism" by Jameson;
11/1	Getting Home, directed by Zhang Yang, and Zhou Yu's Train*,	Lu (TCC) pp.48-86, and pp. 195-212; read a review of Suzhou River; read a review of Cell Phone; mock test VIII; mock test IX; mock test X; mock test XI
11/6	A World without Thieves and Cell Phone*, both directed by Feng Xiaogang; seventh review due	view Eat Drink Man Woman; read "Breaking the Soy Sauce Jar: Diaspora and Displacement in the Films of Ang Lee" in Lu (TCC) pp. 187-218; read Ang Lee's Domestic Tragicomedy: Immigrant Nostalgia, Exotic/Ethnic Tour, Global Market by Sheng-mei Ma
Taiwan
11/8	Eat Drink Man Woman directed by Ang Lee	Mock Test 3; Read "Border Crossing: Mainland China's Presence in Hong Kong Cinema"by Esther Yau View Wedding Banquet; directed by Ang Lee
11/13	Wedding Banquet, directed by Ang Lee	Read article entitled "Intersection: Tsai Ming-liang's Yearning bike boys and Heartsick Heroines" by Chuck Stephens, pp.20-23; view Vive L'amour directed by Ming-liang Tsai; read article by Jameson entitled "Remapping Taipei" pp.117-49
11/15	Vive L'amour, directed by Cai Mingliang; eighth review due; check the term minimalism in the arts	view Cell Phone, dir. by Feng Xiaogang (2005)
11/20	Cell Phone, dir. by Feng Xiaogang	Thanksgiving Break; Sunday (11/27) at 7 p.m. view Chinese Box directed by Wayne Wang; read: "Invisible Cities: Wayne Wang" by Alvin Lu, pp.31-7
Hong Kong
11/27	Chinese Box directed by Wayne Wang; historical background of Hong Kong as a British colony, Kipling and White man's burden; song and lyric of "Rose, Rove, I Love You"	View "Comrades, Almost A Love Story" and read "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" by Stuart Hall, pp.392-403 "Diaspora, Citizenship, Nationality: Hong Kong and 1997" Lu (CTVGP) pp.104-120; read article entitled "Migrancy, Culture, Identity" by Iain Chambers, pp.1-7, 22-9; read a review of Comrades, Almost a Love Story
11/29	Comrades, Almost A Love Story, directed by Peter Chan, and Drifers* directed by ; nineth review due	View Happy Together directed by Kar-wai Wong, read A Leap Forward, Or A Great Sellout? by David Barboza; also Nostalgia of the New Wave: Structure in Wang Kar-wai's Happy Together by Rey Chow
12/4	Happy Together directed by Kar-wai Wong, and Elephant and Fish* directed by Li Yu on homosexuality	Do take-home protion of the final, 50%, due on the day of the final; turn in electronically
12/6	General review; tenth (last) review due	Review and prepare for the final; do take home portion of the final
12/13	Final exam to be held at 9 a.m. in classroom; identify film clips by director, title, and production year; explain the significance of each clip in the context of the whole film from which it is taken

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