This exciting new book takes the form of creative and inspiring interviews with 7 young Chinese filmmakers, revealing new trends that are not fully acknowledged in Western scholarship.
Many balinghou (born post-1980s) filmmakers are grassroots artists from smaller towns or in rural China and not formally trained at film academies. In addition, these younger filmmakers are among the first generation to have benefited hugely from new technology, including digital video cameras, cell phones, and the internet.
More importantly, most of their stories can be traced to their rural hometowns, bringing a fresh repertoire to Chinese independent film. While rural themes are hardly new in Chinese film history, these tended in the past to be told mostly from a top-down, urban-elite perspective. The rural narratives of bailinghou filmmakers, on the other hand, tend to be based on people from their neighborhoods, revealing a sense of social and cultural intimacy not previously encountered.
Karen Ma is a Chinese-American author raised in Hong Kong and Japan. She holds an M.A. in Chinese literature from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the author of The Modern Madame Butterfly and Excess Baggage, A Novel – a semi-autobiographical novel
loosely based on her family's experiences as Chinese immigrants in Tokyo during the post-bubble years of the 1990s.
Published by Long River Press
Distributed by China Books
Available June 1, 2022
250pp, 8×8, paperback, $28.95 list
ISBN 978-1-59265-248-8
