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The Circulation of Chinese Cinemas in the UK: Studies in Taste, Tastemaking and Film Cultures

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The Circulation of Chinese Cinemas in the UK: Studies in Taste, Tastemaking and Film Cultures The Circulation of Chinese Cinemas in the UK: Studies in Taste, Tastemaking and Film Cultures A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2017 Fraser W. Elliott School of Arts, Languages and Cultures List of Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................... 4 Abstract .................................................................................................................... 5 Declaration ............................................................................................................... 6 Copyright Statement ................................................................................................. 7 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. 8 The Author ............................................................................................................... 9 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 10 Studies of film circulation ............................................................................................ 11 A new methodological approach ................................................................................ 18 A note on structure ..................................................................................................... 25 1. Curiosity is Awakened: Incompatibility and Contrasting Chinas in the Early Middlebrow Response ............................................................................................ 27 Film festival studies and national cinemas ................................................................. 27 Mainland China on the film festival circuit ................................................................. 31 The BFI response to Chinese cinema .......................................................................... 35 Challenge to hegemony: Films and Filming ................................................................ 40 Setting the terms of Chineseness ................................................................................ 43 Chinese cinema as a political cinema .......................................................................... 46 Effects on exhibition .................................................................................................... 50 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 53 2. From Golden Harvest to Golden Wonder: Cultural Capital and General East Asianness in the Kung Fu Craze ............................................................................... 56 An exhibition boom ..................................................................................................... 59 The middlebrow response .......................................................................................... 66 Exploiting a cultural moment ...................................................................................... 73 Hap Ki Do and a general East Asianness ..................................................................... 80 Enter the Dragon and the authenticity debate ........................................................... 85 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 95 3. “The most acclaimed Chinese film ever made”: Yellow Earth and the Primacy of Mainland China in Britain's Debate Culture ............................................................. 97 The Hong Kong New Wave ........................................................................................ 100 Debate Culture .......................................................................................................... 107 A satisfied middlebrow.............................................................................................. 114 Yellow Earth at the Edinburgh International Film Festival ........................................ 123 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 130 2 4. Underground Tastemakers and Grassroots Entrepreneurs: Subcultural Capital and the Circulation of Hong Kong’s Genre Cinema after the Kung Fu Craze ................... 134 Divergence from cult cinema .................................................................................... 136 Subcultures and subcultural capital .......................................................................... 143 A gendered, non-Chinese space ................................................................................ 148 Authenticity and action cinema ................................................................................ 152 The marketing of stars ............................................................................................... 156 New approaches to Hong Kong cinema .................................................................... 166 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 172 5. Contemporary Auteurism: The Cultural Specificity of Universal Modes of Appreciation ......................................................................................................... 176 Auteur theory and national cinemas ........................................................................ 178 Wong Kar-wai ............................................................................................................ 182 Tsai Ming-liang .......................................................................................................... 187 Jia Zhangke and Platform .......................................................................................... 192 Wong Kar-wai and In the Mood for Love ................................................................... 198 A concluding comparison .......................................................................................... 206 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 210 Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 219 Audio-Visual Resources ........................................................................................ 251 Filmography ......................................................................................................... 253 Appendix One - Chinese-language Films at the Multiplex, 2016 ............................. 257 Appendix Two: Chinese-language Films in Monthly Film Bulletin ........................... 258 Appendix Three: 1970s Kung-Fu Magazine Scans ................................................... 263 Word Count: 79,573 3 List of Figures Figure 1: China Discovery (1960), Films and Filming, September .................................. 51 Figure 2: Kung Fu Monthly (1974 – 1984) and Dragon (1975) ....................................... 74 Figure 3: Bruce Lee's Super Fan! in Dragon (1975) ......................................................... 76 Figure 4: Kung Fu in Action, Dragon (1975) .................................................................... 78 Figure 5: Man Wanted (1995) VHS. Eastern Heroes Ltd ............................................... 139 Figure 6: Naked Killer (2002) VHS. Hong Kong Legends ............................................... 150 Figure 7: Hong Kong Legends, Issue 4 .......................................................................... 159 Figure 8: Pedicab Driver (1996) VHS. Made in Hong Kong ........................................... 161 Figure 9: Pedicab Driver (2015) DVD. Warner Archives ................................................ 161 Figure 10: Winners and Sinners (2004) DVD. Hong Kong Legends; My Lucky Stars (2012) DVD. Cine Asia; Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars (2012) DVD. Cine Asia. ........................... 163 Figure 11: “Excellence in Action” in Hong Kong Legends (Issue 1: 6 – 7) ..................... 169 Figure 12: “Excellence in Action” in Hong Kong Legends (Issue 4: 6 – 7) ..................... 170 Figure 13: Chungking Express (1994, Wong Kar-wai); “Halo” (1997) Music Video. Texas. Mercury Records ........................................................................................................... 184 Figure 14: In the Mood for Love (2001) DVD. Tartan .................................................... 203 4 Abstract This thesis has two interrelated research objectives. First, to understand the circulation of Chinese cinema in Britain through the cultural authorities and gatekeepers responsible for the canonisation of international film. Second, to use Chinese-language films as case studies through which to deconstruct and better understand the mechanisms that make up British film cultures and their tastemaking practices. English-language Chinese film studies has long been preoccupied with the semantic issue of how to define such a loaded and diverse concept as “Chinese cinema”, with investigations generally focusing on film form and production contexts. This thesis extends these studies to include considerations of the role played by film circulation, to observe how the parameters of these analyses and the films of their focus are defined in the first instance. This thesis
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