Advanced Seminar: Autumn

Undergraduate / Graduate

This class introduces students to the popular forms of Sinophone cinema though the aperture of the New Year Film (hesuipian). The first movies advertised as New Year films date to the 1930s, when cinema-going became a part of the Chinese urban holiday routine in commercial port cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong. Today, the popular movies that top Chinese domestic box office are almost always released in January or February as Spring Festival offerings. The New Year Film is thus both a holiday marketing category in Sinophone territories and a mass cultural phenomenon that vividly illustrates the cinematic organization of space and time. Over the nine-week winter quarter, we will launch a comprehensive inquiry into the kind of experiences-globalization, urbanization, migration, and diaspora-that mediate the transformations of the Chinese New Year Film, while enjoying a number of its incarnations together over the course of the Lunar New Year holidays. Open to upper-level CMS students: Instructor consent required for all other students.