Abstract
While studies on film festivals have flourished in the past decade, research focusing on Chinese film festivals has lagged in its development. However, the situation has now been rectified with the publication of Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation, edited by Chris Berry and Luke Robinson. Chinese Film Festivals “is the first book about the so far relatively neglected topic of Chinese film festivals, defined as film festivals in the Chinese speaking world and festivals of Chinese cinema held elsewhere” (p. 1; emphasis original). It is the first book devoted to the topic, but with its empirical richness and analytical rigor, it will shape the development of Chinese film festival studies for years to come.
Film festivals examined in this volume include those held in the Sinophone sphere of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as those held outside—London and New York—that showcase Chinese language films. The volume covers an extensive range of film festivals, from mainstream international film festivals to more independently organized and specialized film festivals. The key organizing framework for the volume is to understand Chinese film festivals as “sites of translation”—how films from around the world are introduced and translated to the Chinese-speaking world and how Chinese language films are showcased and translated in the outside world. In addition, the framework explores how the models of international film festivals are translated and transformed in Chinese film festivals. Moreover, the framework reflects upon various implications of the rise of Chinese film festivals for the Eurocentric model of international film festivals and also for academic film festival studies.
The book opens with a concise but valuable “Introduction,” which puts forward the key conceptual framework of translation and situates the book within the broader intellectual lineage of film festival studies. The main part of the book is divided into two sections. The first section, “Translating the Film Festival,” tackles how the historically Eurocentric model of international film festivals is translated and transformed in the film festivals in the Chinese-speaking world and in Chinese film festivals abroad. The second section, “Translating Culture,” deals with the issue of how Chinese film festivals function as sites of translating different cultures. The first section begins with three chapters on international film festivals: Chris Berry on Shanghai and Hong Kong, Elena Pollacchi on Beijing, and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley on the Golden Harvest Award in Taiwan. Then the subsequent five chapters examine specialized film festivals in the Chinese-speaking world: Hongwei Bao on the Beijing Queer Film Festival, Flora Lichaa on the Beijing Independent Film Festival, Julian Stringer and Nikki Lee on the Tudou Video Festival, Esther C.M. Yau on the hong kong social movement film festival and the Chinese Documentary Festival, and Sabrina Qiong Yu and Lydia Dan Wu on the China Independent Film Festival in Nanjing. The first section ends with Luke Robinson’s chapter on the London Taiwan Cinefest and the Chinese Visual Festival. The second section includes three chapters on international film festivals: Dina Iordanova’s discussion of various ways “China” is narrated in different film festivals, Ran Ma’s examination of how the Hong Kong and Shanghai Film Festivals differentially program “China,” and Gina Marchetti’s analysis of the “festival film”—Clara Law’s Red Earth—commissioned by the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Then, the three chapters on specialized film festivals follow: Jenny Chio on the Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, Su-Anne Yeo on Hong Kong’s cross-border network of small festivals as a “minor transnationalism,” and Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong on three different Chinese film festivals in New York.
The strength of the book, first, is in the details. Although the editors note that they “have not attempted even or comprehensive coverage” (p. 4), the volume clearly covers a vast ground, from large-scale mainstream international film festivals to more independently organized and specialized film festivals in Chinese-speaking regions and beyond (the UK and the U.S.); the richness of descriptive details and a variety of approaches taken in the chapters—from film studies, media and communications studies, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, to anthropology—will provide valuable theoretical and methodological models for scholars interested in researching Chinese film festivals. “Chinese Character Lists” compiled at the end of the volume—including “Filmography,” “Film Festivals,” and “Chinese Names and Filmmaker Names”—will also be a useful resource for Chinese film festivals scholars. I also consider a wide variety of contributors—from senior, leading scholars in the field to advanced graduate students—from Europe, North America, and Asia a great plus as the variety brings in different experiences and vantage points to the discussion.
The second strength, no less important, is its organizing framework of “translation” presented in the “Introduction.” The editors define “translation in this volume as a transformative and trans-border practice of power that operates in two ways: to translate culture and to translate the film festival as idea and practice” (p. 4). The analytical clarity and empirical specification in the definition provide consistency to the volume that includes fifteen substantive chapters with various contents. The “Introduction” also provides a concise description of the evolution of general film festival studies and how Chinese film festival studies position within the academic genealogy. Depending on one’s particular interest, readers may jump to any of the substantive chapters included, but I recommend reading the “Introduction” first to understand better the broader academic context within which each chapter is situated.
One book cannot accomplish everything at once, and some gaps remain. For example, as “translation” is the key organizing framework of the book, as a sociologist myself, I wonder how the emerging field of “sociology of translation” (Latour, 2005, p. 106) might have further expanded the analytical edge of the volume. For example, the processual framework of the four “moments” of translation consisting of “problematisation,” “interessement,” “enrolment,” and “mobilisation” (Callon, 1984, p. 196) might have further highlighted the contested nature of the construction of various film festival stakeholders discussed in several chapters of the volume. Discussions of Chinese film festivals in non-Chinese speaking worlds are limited to those in English-speaking megalopolises—London and New York. Examinations of Chinese film festivals in smaller cities—for example, college towns—as well as in non-Anglo-American regions—such as in non-English speaking Europe and Asia—may further enrich the discussion.
I consider these and other remaining gaps not as weaknesses of the book, but rather as exciting avenues for exploration opened up by the volume, as the theoretical framework and care for rich empirical materials are fully compatible with the further exploration in some of the unexplored territories. In conclusion, the analytical consistency provided by the concept of translation, as well as the empirical richness of the volume, makes this book a must-read for scholars interested in Chinese cinema and Chinese film festivals; it will also be a valuable source of inspiration for researchers broadly interested in the process of cultural translation and social mediation in general.
