'My' Self on Camera First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China

by Yu, Kiki Tianqi

• ISBN13: 9780748698219
• ISBN10: 0748698213
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-12-01
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• More Book Details
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Summary

'My' Self on Camera is the first book to explore first person narrative documentary in China's post-Mao era. Since the emergence of the individual as an ever more important social figure in China, this mode of independent filmmaking and cultural practice has become increasingly significant. Combining the approach of cultural ethnography, interviews, and textual analysis of selected films, this study examines the motivations, key aesthetic features and ethical tensions of presenting the self on camera, as well as the socio-political, cultural and technical conditions surrounding its practice. This book problematises how the sense of self and subjectivities are understood in contemporary China, and provides illuminating new insights on the changing notion of the individual through cinema.

Author Biography

Kiki Tianqi Yu is a filmmaker, scholar, and film curator. Her work includes feature documentary film China's van Goghs (2016), and edited volume China's iGeneration (2014). She is currently Lecturer in Filmmaking at the University of the West of Scotland.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Action, Amateurness and the Changing Sense of the Individual Self

Chapter One: Female First-Person Documentary Practice: Negotiating Gendered Expectations

Chapter Two: The Amateurness and An Inward Gaze at Home

Chapter Three: Nostalgia toward Laojia: Old-home as an Imagined Past

Chapter Four: First Person Action documentary: Longing for a More Politicalised Space

Chapter Five: Ethics, Camera and Language in Contestable Minjian Public Spaces: the Problematic Public Self

Chapter Six: Camera Activism: Provocative documentation, First Person Confrontation, and Collective force

Chapter Seven: Whose Self on Camera? - Motives, Mistrust, Disputed Authenticities

Chapter Eight: From Fragile First Person Documentary Practice, to Popular online First Person Live Streaming Broadcast - Zhibo: Changing Intentions, Changing Individual Selves

Acknowledgements

Filmography

Bibliographies

Pictures

Index