Documentaries from and about Greater China, 5 op

This course will examine classic and contemporary documentaries from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora as well as some exemplary and important non-fiction films about China made in the West. Students will read a variety of seminal and cutting edge critical texts and view selected documentary films mostly from the Post-Mao period to the present. Texts will introduce students to major intellectual currents informing these films as well as their socio/historical contexts.

Even though centering on Chinese narratives and China´s on screen representation, this course explores the historiographic, philosophical, and political implications of documentary film in a global context. The course probes the cultural flows in documentary practice, placing Greater Chinese documentaries in critical engagement with North American and European documentary, and postcolonial works from the Global South, as well as critically assessing western representations of China. Utilizing documentary studies the course interrogates the cultural assumptions of objectivity as it is appended to documentary theory and practice through, for example political economy, film theory and formal film analysis, critical ethnography, feminist analysis, ecological approaches and critical historiography.

This course will also explore how forces of colonialism, migration, globalization, digitalization and economic liberalization have dramatically changed these Chinese societies and their non-fiction screen representations. Thus, the students will gain more understanding of the history and culture of Chinese societies and the People´s Republic in particular.