Ten Monday Must Visits

Some great (recent) reading, listening, and viewing links with which to begin the week - from (a far too chilled out for its own good) Film Studies For Free:

• Paul Bowman, 'The Fantasy Corpus of Martial Arts' (essay draft), Cultural Studies, June 25, 2009
• Vicki Callahan, 'Interview with Joan Myers on her research regarding Virginia Rappe and Fatty Arbuckle', Feminism 3.0, July 2, 2009 podcast and slideshow
• Dublin2009, 'From Robin Wood to Robin Askwith', [Opening post from new blogspot] From Robin Wood to Robin Askwith: Explorations in British Film, July 2, 2009
• Ed Howard's superb idea for a new blog, The Film Blog Calendar, July 1, 2009 (great listings of notable blog events)
• Dan Jardine, 'My Year in Film Studies Part 1', Cinemania, June 29, 2009
• Jason Mittell, 'Previously On: Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory', Just TV, July 3, 2009
• Meaghan Morris, 'Banality in Cultural Studies', Cultural Studies, June 8, 2009
• Anne Helen Petersen, 'Everything Old is New, Everything New is Old [on the history and study of celebrity gossip]', Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style - proto-scholastic musings on star studies 2.0, June 9, 2009
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'GERTRUD as Nonnarrative: The Desire for the Image', JonathanRosenbaum.com, July 5, 2009
• Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Do the Right Thing Is About More Than Just Race', The L Magazine, July 4, 2009 Video essay (also see HERE)
  

Adrian Martin Podcast

Film Studies For Free is delighted to inform its readers, today, about a really worthwhile podcast by Adrian Martin - a recording of a great talk he gave in the Provisional Insight Colloquium series at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, on July 18 2008, entitled 'Last Day Every Day: Figural Thinking in Auerbach, Kracauer, Benjamin and some others'.

The abstract for the talk is given below. The podcast (just over an hour long) can be accessed (with or without a slideshow) from the Monash University Arts website HERE.

For further great podcasts from the same series (by Ian Aitken; Andrew Benjamin; Graeme Gilloch; Helen Grace; Deane Williams; and the wonderful Lesley Stern) click HERE.

Last Day Every Day: Figural Thinking in Auerbach, Kracauer, Benjamin and Some Others

Adrian Martin

In “A Philosophical Interpretation of Freud”, Paul Ricoeur (drawing upon Hegel) remarks: “The appropriation of a meaning constituted prior to me presupposes the movement of a subject drawn ahead of itself by a succession of ‘figures’, each of which finds its meaning in the ones which follow it.” The notion of the figural has recently become popular in European film theory and analysis, especially due to the work of Nicole Brenez – in which the figure stands for “the force … of everything that remains to be constituted” in a character, object, social relation or idea. Her use of the term refers back to magisterial work of German literary philologist Erich Auerbach (Mimesis), who decoded the religious interpretive system wherein all persons and events are grasped as significant only insofar as they prefigure their fulfilment on the ‘last day’ of divine judgement. Auerbach’s 1920s work on figuration in Dante was an important influence on his friend Walter Benjamin; and it was this ‘theological’ aspect of Benjamin’s thought that caught Kracauer’s attention, leading to the problematic of the redemption of worldly things. In this lecture I will trace the notion of figural thinking from Weimar then to Paris (and beyond) today, taking in writings by William Routt and Giorgio Agamben, as well as two filmmakers also touched by figural thinking: Josef von Sternberg and Douglas Sirk.

Adrian Martin is Senior Research Fellow in Film and Television Studies, Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). His books include What is Modern Cinema? (Uqbar 2008), Raul Ruiz: Magnificent Obsessions (Altamira 2004), The Mad Max Movies (Screensound/Currency 2003), Once Upon a Time in America (BFI 1998) and Phantasms (Penguin 1994), and he has regular columns in Film Quarterly (US), De Filmkrant (Holland) and Cahiers du cinéma España (Spain). He is the Co-editor of Movie Mutations (BFI 2003) and the Internet film magazine Rouge.

Video Essay 1: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes

Mystery Man in Les Bonnes femmes (1960)

It's a really B I G D A Y here at Film Studies For Free. But do, please, be gentle...

This posting brings you the first ever little video essay about a film studies topic (in this case, a single film) produced by this blog's author: Unsentimental Education: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes.

The exercise probably only shows that there's a mighty long way to go with this format for this author before anything near full proficiency in it can be claimed (for example, the voiceover commentary would have sounded a lot better had the person delivering it not been quite so nervous/terrified during the recording). But it's a good enough beginning for what FSFF sincerely hopes will go on to be a regular, if occasional, feature.

The essay has been produced, as previously promised, to coincide with, and thus to contribute to, the final day of the wonderful Chabrol blogathon hosted by Flickhead's blog (see HERE for a list of all the fantastic contributions, so far, to the event).

Some supplementary material about this strange, beguiling film Les Bonnes femmes/The Good Time Girls (France/Italy, 1960, directed by Chabrol), together with a link to a full transcript of the video essay's commentary and some pedagogical and critical reflections on the process of making it, wlll be added to this post as soon as possible. So, do please come back for that. (Updated July 8, 2009: transcript accessible HERE).

But, time was of the essence to join in with the blogathon. So all else can wait. Here below, then, is the essay, archived at FSFF's new supplementary site, for related videos, at Vimeo. It contains a few significant plot spoilers (as few as possible...). Also, please note that, for the purposes of its critical-scholarly analysis and commentary, the essay transforms many of the original elements of the film that it 'quotes', employing newly created still images (and new sounds), slowed motion, and quite heavy (at times) re-editing (including reordering) of image and sound/music.

In other words, you must see the original film, if you haven't done so already. Les Bonnes femmes is currently available on DVD thanks to Kino Video (Region 1 only). It can be ordered from that company's website HERE, or from Amazon.com HERE

Adam Curtis Links

Image from Pandora's Box (Adam Curtis, 1992)

Film Studies For Free concurs with David Bordwell's recent assessment that Adam Curtis is one of the most remarkable documentarians working today ('Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares, [is] one of the great docs of recent years').

If you haven't yet heard of him, Curtis is a British television documentary producer who has written and directed a number of hugely influential, multi-part, political film essays, including the award-winning Century of the Self, the aforementioned The Power of Nightmares, The Mayfair Set, Pandora's Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.

FSFF was really excited, therefore, to hear of Curtis's new blog hosted at the BBC website (news courtesy of David Hudson at The Daily and also from a nice post at the great Screen Research website, which FSFF promises to profile in more detail really soon).

Curtis's blog muses mostly about his new project which Charlie Brooker, writing for The Guardian, describes as follows:

He's made a new documentary called It Felt Like A Kiss. Except it isn't just a documentary. It's also a piece of interactive theatre, with music composed by Damon Albarn and performed by the Kronos Quartet. And it doesn't take place in a cinema or concert hall, but across five floors of a deserted office block in Manchester [as part of the Manchester International Festival]July 2-9, 2009]. [...]

In summary, from what I can gather, It Felt Like A Kiss is both the craziest yet crookedly rational project I've ever heard about. Hearing Curtis talk about that huge subject, that huge building, that brink-of-madness, reality-blurring feel, there are a few unmistakeable parallels with Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman's recent film, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman takes control of an infinitely huge Manhattan warehouse and attempts to stage a boundary-shattering show that will sum up the entirety of human experience. He over-reaches and winds up creating a work of ever-expanding fractal madness. Curtis, I think, has gone a bit mad, too - but to precisely the right degree.

Curtis himself wrote in a post on June 17 - which also carries a longish trailer for the project - that

It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to make a film about something that has always fascinated me - how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy - but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world.

Film Studies For Free will, in its downtime, fantasize about a little visit up to Manchester. Meanwhile, below are some of the most interesting, freely accessible, scholarly resources, websites, and online essays about Curtis's work and related matters:

• Adam Curtis films free to view or download from the Internet Archive (e.g. films either in the public domain or licensed under a license that allows redistribution, such as those offered by Creative Commons)

• The Mayfair Set (1999 - part 1 - end missing)
• The Mayfair Set (1999 - part 4)
• The Century of the Self (three parts - 2002)
• The Power of Nightmares (three parts 2005)
• The Trap: What happened to our idea of freedom - Part 1 (2007)
  

• Zygmunt Bauman, 'The Demons of an Open Society', London School of Economics, October 20, 2005
• Graham Coulter-Smith and Maurice Owen, 'Introduction', Art in the Age of Terrorism (Paul Holberton publishing/University of Washington Press, 2005)
• David Crawford, 'Realism vs. Reality TV in the War on Terror: Artworks as Models of Interpretation', Geometer, January 19, 2009
• Adam Curtis, Panel Discussion on'Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age' in association with Routledge and King's College London, and sponsored by the Body&Soul section of The Times, An Institute of Ideas symposium at King’s College London, 22 November 2003
• Mark Jensen, 'DOCUMENTARY: 'The Power of Nightmares' by Adam Curtis -- summary of argument ', United For Peace, September 11, 2005
• Jonathan Kahana, excerpt from Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary (Columbia University Press, 2008)
• Peter Knight, 'Conspiracy Theories about 9/11', Centre for International Politics Working Paper Series, No. 34, August 2007
• Robert Koehler, 'Neo-Fantasies and Ancient Myths: Adam Curtis on The Power of Nightmares', Cinema Scope Issue 23, 2005
• Laurie A. Manwell, 'Faulty Towers of Belief: Part II. Rebuilding the Road to Freedom of Reason', Journal of 9/11 Studies, August 2007
• Sharon Lin Tay, (2008), long excerpt from ʻUndisclosed Recipients: documentary in an era of digital convergenceʼ, Studies in Documentary Film 2: 1, pp. 79–98

Also see: Erroll Morris's interview with Curtis HERE; Andrew Orlowski's recent article about Curtis for THE REGISTER HERE.

Friday Round Up

Film Studies For Free brings you a little Friday round up of just-out-now scholarly links.

• There's a truly bumper new issue of the journal JUMP CUT: A Review of Contemporary Media (issue 51), with 45 new freely accessible articles, including the following:
  

Imagining torture by Chuck Kleinhans; Torture documentaries by Julia Lesage; A Simple Case for Torture, redux by Martha Rosler; The Wire and the world: narrative and metanarrative by Helena Sheehan and Sheamus Sweeney; “Don’t Just Watch It, Live It:” technology, corporate partnerships, and The Hills by Elizabeth Affuso; Postmodern marketing, Generation Y and the multiplatform viewing experience of MTV’s The Hills by Amanda Klein; The past isn't what it used to be: the troubled homes of Mad Men by Mark Taylor; Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica reviewed by David Greven; Global formats, gender and identity: the search for The Perfect Bride on Italian television by Michela Ardizzoni; A nightmare of capitalist Japan: Spirited Away by Ayumi Suzuki; The curious cases of Salma, Siti, and Ming:representations of Indonesia’s polygamous life in Love for Share by Ekky Imanjaya; Gender and class in the Singaporean film 881 by Brenda Chan; Cinenumerology: interview with Royston Tan, one of Singapore’s most versatile filmmakers by Anne Ciecko; Visible “waves”: notes on Koreanness, pan-Asianness, and some recent Southeast Asian art films by Anne Ciecko and Hunju Lee; Asia’s beloved sassy girl: Jun Ji-Hyun’s star image and her transnational stardom by JaeYoon Park; Pornography and its critical reception: toward a theory of masturbation by Magnus Ullén; Real sex: the aesthetics and economics of art-house porn by Jon Lewis; Documentary and the anamnesis of queer space: The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman by Nicholas de Villiers; Documentary investigations and the female porn star by Belinda Smaill; The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene reviewed by Catherine Clepper; Documenting and denial: discourses of sexual self-exploitation by Leigh Goldstein; Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood by Kirk Boyle; The exceptional darkness of The Dark Knight by Todd McGowan; The Dark Knight of American empire by Randolph Lewis; Post-Iraq cinema: the veteran hero in The Jacket and Harsh Times by Justin Vicari; WALL-E: from environmental adaptation to sentimental nostalgia by Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann; Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino: the death of America’s hero by Robert Alpert; Interpreting revolution: Che: Part I and Part II by Victor Wallis; The cold world behind the window: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Romanian cinema’s return to real-existing communism by Constantin Parvulescu; Retrieving Emir Kusturica’s Underground as a critique of ethnic nationalism by Sean Homer; Dimensions of exile in the videos of Silvia Malagrino by Ilene S. Goldman; No parking between signs: on Sadie Benning's Flat is Beautiful and early works by Burlin Barr; Sex versus the small screen: home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también by Caetlin Benson-Allott; Torture, maternity, and truth in Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica: Land of My Dreams by Caroline Koebel; Culture wars: some new trends in art horror by Joan Hawkins; Misogyny as radical commentary: Rashomon retold in Takashi Miike’s Masters of Horror: Imprint by William Leung; The dangers of biosecurity: The Host and the geopolitics of outbreak by Hsuan L. Hsu; The return of horror to Chinese cinema: an aesthetic of restraint and space of horror by Li Zeng; Cross cultural disgust: some problems in the analysis of contemporary horror cinema by Chuck Kleinhans; Media salad by Chuck Kleinhans; Racing into the Obama era by the editors; Remembrance against manufactured amnesia: on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident by David Leiwei Li. Plus several book reviews.

• The new issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture is available, including the following articles:

'Gypsy Stars in the New Europe' by Aniko Imre; 'When Satellites Fall: On the Trails of Cosmos 954 and USA 193' by Lisa Parks; 'Towards a Typology of Dance TV Contestants' by Christine Quail; 'No Rerun Nation: Canadian Television and Cultural Amnesia' by Serra Tinic; 'And the winner of Britain's Got Talent is . . .' by Lisa W. Kelly.

• The summer 2009 issue of the high quality journal Film Quarterly (Vol. 62, No. 4) has just come out, offering the following freely accessible columns:

Rob White, 'Editor's Notebook: Heaven Knows We're Digital Now' ; Joshua Clover, 'Marx and Coca-Cola: Cinema for a New Grand Game'; Laura Mulvey, 'Reconsideration: The Earrings of Madame de . . . ; Michael Colvino, 'Ecosystem: La malavita: Gomorrah and Naples'. As it is celebrating its 50th anniversary, it is also still offering free access to 'Da Capo,' a history of FQ written by founding editor Ernest Callenbach.

• The UK Film Council today launches its detailed research report Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Cultural Impact of UK Film 1946-2006 (also see HERE).

[According to its press release,] it’s a timely and stimulating report, confirming that film has been one of the most powerful cultural and social agents of the last 100 years. Taking 200 iconic films from the past six decades, it traces how British cinema has upheld some traditional British values – and mocked, challenged and undermined others. It shows how important film has been in sustaining and developing the identity of the UK’s nations and regions, and in reflecting the changing face of Britain’s different communities. And it charts the extraordinary power British film can wield at home and abroad – even more so with the massive economic and technological evolution film has experienced in recent years. This study highlights the cultural impact of British film. It calls on us to acknowledge and appreciate the strength, the diversity and the rude health of our film heritage and to acknowledge its increasingly vital role in contemporary culture.

Going the distance with Claude Chabrol

Film Studies For Free is rather partial to a good film blogathon and there's potentially a very good one coming up that FSFF readers absolutely must check out. In honour of Claude Chabrol's 79th birthday this June 24, Flickhead aka Ray Young is hosting Ten Days’ Wonder: The Claude Chabrol Blogathon from Sunday, June 21 through Tuesday, June 30.

To paraphrase the kind of clichéd British crime drama dialogue in which the classy Chabrol himself would never indulge, Young has 'plenty of previous' when it comes to the films of this near octogenarian: he is the author of the Claude Chabrol Project website which, among other great resources, hosts detailed interviews with and articles about Chabrol.

The Flickhead blogathon is sure to link to further comprehensive web resources on Chabrol, so below, just to flag up the e-event, is Film Studies For Free's little list of links to online scholarly highlights pertaining to this as yet most under-studied great director.

Film Studies For Free's author is aiming to join in with the Chabrol fest next week, so... à bientôt (s'il vous plaît...). [The link to FSFF's video essay - 'Unsentimental Education: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes' is HERE.]

• Acquarello, 'CLAUDE CHABROL: Le Boucher, The Story of Women, La Ceremonie, The Flower of Evil, The Bridesmaid, Bellamy', Strictly Film School, 2002
• Richard Armstrong, 'Claude Chabrol,' (Great Directors: A Critical Database) Senses of Cinema, September 2002
• David Cairns, 'Go Ask Alice', Shadowplay, August 8, 2008
  
• Claudette Charbonneau and Lucy Winer, 'Violette: Skilled, delicate, pernicious', from Jump Cut, no. 21, Nov. 1979, pp. 6-7
• Charles Derry, 'Claude Chabrol: A career overview', The Claude Chabrol Project
• dkaz, 'image series: Les Biches (Chabrol, France, 1968)', D+Kaz, Jan 29, 2007
• Mary Donaldson-Evans, 'A Medium of Exchange: The Madame Bovary film', Dix-Neuf, No. 4, April 2005
• Catherine Grant, 'Unsentimental Education: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes - a video essay', Film Studies For Free, June 30, 2009
  
• Stefan Gullatz, 'Exquisite Ex-timacy: Jacques Lacan vis-à-vis Contemporary Horror', Offscreen Journal, March 31, 2001
• Dan Harper, 'Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge', Senses of Cinema, March 2001
• Robert Kolker, The Altering Eye - Contemporary International Cinema (OUP, 1983) in: eLib, Hg. v. eLibrary Projekt, in: elib.at ( 16. Juni 2009 ) - numerous mentions of Chabrol - use 'find' in 'Edit'
• Julien Lapointe, 'La Cérémonie,' Senses of Cinema 13, 2001 Apr-May
• Kevin B Lee, 'Claude Chabrol: an online dossier', Shooting Down Pictures, March 27, 2008
• Peter Lev, 'Paul Gégauff', FilmReference.com, 2008
  
• Tony McKibbin, 'Slow Burn Suspense: The Films of Claude Chabrol', Images, Issue 9, December 2000
• Vladislav Mijic, 'Les Biches,' Senses of Cinema 13, 2001 Apr-May
• Marie-Claire Ropars, 'A Cinematic Language', Rouge 11, 2007
• Dan Sallitt/Kevin B Lee, 'Two Films By Claude Chabrol (Le boucher (1970) and La femme infidele (1969)) - 3 video essays', Shooting Down Pictures, March 27, 2008
• Andrew Slade, 'Chabrol for Beginners (and Other Interested Parties)', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 3, January 2001
• David Sterritt, 'Hitchcock, Hume, and the Matrix of Modern Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2007
• Quentin Turnour, 'Que la bête meure', Senses of Cinema, March 2001
• Tony Williams, 'Relations Between the Sexes in the Cinema of the Nouvelle Vague', WELL Project, February 28, 2002
• Ray Young, 'Stéphane Audran', Cinema and the Female Star - A Symposium Part 1, Senses of Cinema, 2002

Suzhou River and 'Sixth-Generation' Chinese Filmmaking

Film Studies For Free's author has been busy writing, for her day job, about 婁燁/ Lou Ye's Chinese/German coproduction 苏州河 /Suzhou he/Suzhou River (2000), a striking film which plays much more cleverly than most movies with the idea of implied authorship.

Below are some links to the freely-accessible, online resources of note pertaining to that film, as well as to 'Sixth-Generation' Chinese filmmaking more generally, which were gleaned as part of the research process:

• Cody Beckman, 'Suzhou River', Transnational Chinese Cinemas, December 8, 2008
• Robert Chi, 'Review of Hitchcock with a Chinese Face: Cinematic Doubles, Oedipal Triangles, and China's Moral Voice, by Jerome Silbergeld', MCLC Resource Center Publication, September 2006
• Jerry Clode, 'Suzhou River', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context Issue 7, March 2002
• Gavin Collinson, 'Suzhou River', BBC4 website, April 24, 2004
• Richard Corliss, 'Bright Lights,'Time Asia 157, 12 (March 26, 2001)
• Kirk A. Denton, Bibliography of Chinese Film, Chinese Media & Print Culture resources MCLC
• Lizzie Francke, 'Review of Suzhou RIver' , Sight & Sound, Dec. 2000
• Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and John G. Gammack, 'Shanghai: World City?', Tourism and the Branded City (Ashgate, 2007)
• J. Hoberman, 'Eternal Return', Village Voice, November 7th 2000
• Brian Hu, 'Above Ground and Over His Head', Asia Pacific Arts, February 3, 2005
• Julia Kny, 'A Chinese Vertigo? Tracing Suzhou River's Musical Independence and Innovation', Jörg Lemberg's website, 2006
• Shelly Kraicer, 'Suzhou River', chinesecinemas.org, April 2000
• Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, 'Introduction' and 'Globalization and Yoythful Subculture: The Chinese Sixth-Generation Films at the Dawn of the New Century', Multiple modernities: cinemas and popular media in transcultural East Asia (Temple University Press, 2003)
• Yung Adam Lam, Identity, tradition and globalism in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese feature films, PhD e-thesis, The University of Auckland, 2000
• Charles Leary, 'Performing the Documentary, or Making it to te Other Bank', Senses of Cinema, July 2003
  
• Shannon May, Film for the New Long March: The Search for National Identity in Chinese Cinema, 1984-2000. Magna Cum Laude Thesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2000
• Shannon May, 'Power and Trauma in Chinese Film: Experiences of Zhang Yuan and the Sixth Generation” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 8:1 (Spring 2003), 156-160
• Peter Nellhaus, 'Two by Lou Ye', Coffee, Coffee, and More Coffee, September 24, 2006
  
• Jenni Peisa, The Unable Individual: The Actantial Analyses of Three Chinese Films and Discussion on Their Representations of the Individual’s Position in Contemporary Chinese Society, Masters e-Thesis, University of Helsinki, April 2008
• Polar Bear, 'Suzhou River (Ye Lou, 2000)', Polar Bear's Film Journal, August 4, 2008
• Peter C. Pugsley, 'Review of The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century by Zhang Zhen (ed.), Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007, Scope, Issue 12, 2008
• Ma Ran, 'The Sixth-Generation Cinema: To Continue the Dialogue with the West', Cina Oggi, September 17, 2007
  
• Bérénice Reynaud, 'Dancing with Myself, Drifting with My Camera: The Emotional Vagabonds of China's New Documentary,' Senses of Cinema, No 28, 2003
  
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'The World is Watching: Suzhou River', Chicago Reader - On Film, 2001
• Damion Searls, 'Suzhou River', Film Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2001
• Donato Totaro, 'FCMM: Into the 21st Century', Offscreen Journal, November 28, 2000
• Lara Vanderstaay, 'A case study of the influence of directorial gender on the representation of female sexuality in four contemporary Chinese films [Red Sorghum, Soul of A Painter, Blush and Suzhou River]', Proceedings of the 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Canberra 29 June - 2 July 2004
• Mike Walsh, 'Review of Zhang Zhen (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007', Screening the Past, September 20, 2008
• Gary G. Xu, 'Introduction: China's (Cinematic) Century', Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
• Neil Young, 'Suzhou River', Jigsaw Lounge, February 28, 2001