Speaking in Images
Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers
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by Michael Berry
Columbia University Press
Due/Published
October 2005, 352 pages,
paper
ISBN
0231133316
"Chinese-language filmmaking has entered a new era. Michael Berry's unique access to filmmakers and his deep knowledge of Chinese culture and film history have yielded probing, insightful portraits of major creative figures. From Beijing to Hong Kong, from Shanghai to Taipei, these directors are creating today's most exciting regional cinema." -- David Bordwell, author of Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment "Speaking in Images gives you the stories of individual artists, articulating their own perspectives toward their art, their working methods, their inspirations, the problems they've encountered. It also provides a marvelous portrait of not one but three societies--mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan" -- Martin Scorsese, from the foreword "I always compare filmmaking to cooking. Shooting is like buying the groceries. You buy all kinds of ingredients and the better ingredients you get, the better chance you have of making the movie you want." -- Ang Lee, from Speaking in Images Speaking in Images offers an engaging and rare collection of interviews with the directors who have changed the face of Chinese and international cinema. Michael Berry's discussions with such directors as Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Zhang Yimou (Hero), Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Stanley Kwan (Lan Yu), Tsai Ming-Liang (Vive l'Amour), Edward Yang (Yi Yi), and Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai) offer an eclectic and comprehensive portrait of contemporary Chinese cinema. In interviews that capture each filmmaker's unique vision, the subjects discuss their formative years, the ideas and influences that shaped their work, film aesthetics, battles with censors and studios, the mingling of commercial and art film, and the future of Chinese cinema in a transnational context. Berry's introduction to the collection provides an overview of Chinese cinema in the second half of the twentieth century, placing the directors and their work in a wider historical and cultural context. Contents Foreword by Martin Scorsese
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Introduction: Speaking in Images I. Voices from China
Xie Jin: Six Decades of Cinematic Innovation
Tian Zhuangzhuang: Stealing Horses and Flying Kites
Chen Kaige: Historical Revolution and Cinematic Rebellion
Zhang Yimou: Flying Colors
Zhang Yuan: Working up a Sweat in a Celluloid Sauna
Wang Xiaoshuai: Banned in China
Jia Zhangke: Capturing a Transforming Reality
Li Yang: The Future of Chinese Cinema? II. Voices from Taiwan
Hou Hsiao-hsien with Chu Tien-wen: Words and Images
Edward Yang: Luckily Unlucky
Wu Nien-jen: Writing Taiwan in the Shadows of Cultural Colonialism
Ang Lee: Freedom in Film
Tsai Ming-liang: Trapped in the Past
Chang Tso-chi: Shooting from the Margins III. Voices from Hong Kong
Ann Hui: Living Through Films
Stanley Kwan: From Spectral Nostalgia to Corporeal Desire
Fruit Chan: Hong Kong Independent
Peter Ho-sun Chan: Pioneering Pan-Asian Cinema
Evans Chan: The Last of the Chinese Notes
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