Shanghai Filmmaking

Huang Xuelei, Ph.D. (2009), University of Heidelberg, is Chancellor’s Research Fellow in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She has published on Chinese cinema, print culture and the social history of modern China.

“Huang Xuelei invites readers to go on a delightful tour that will familiarize them with the unforgettable personalities and practices responsible for the remarkable Mingxing story. When this special tour is over, readers will know much more about the complex origins of Chinese filmmaking and how these origins help us better understand the complicated world of Chinese filmmaking today.” Paul G. Pickowicz, University of California, San Diego"[Huang]'s interdisciplinary approach ultimately adds richness to our understanding of Mingxing, and the historiographical method of multiple strands provides us with a comprehensive and palimpsestic picture. [Huang] argues that melodrama is the social form and the narrative mode favored by all, thereby explaining its dominance in Mingxing production. [Huang], like some scholars of Chinese cinema, has traced the cross-cultural influence of melodrama in, for instance, transnational remakes or adaptation while noting the multiplicity of genres produced by Mingxing."Xiangyang Cindy Chen, independent scholar, China Review International, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2014. "Shanghai Filmmaking [is] a key volume in the rapidly expanding library of books on Chinese cinema of the Republican era, and one which will have lasting value for scholars for years to come."-Chris Berry, The China Quarterly, Volume 221, March 2015, pp 279-280.

• Figures, Charts, and TablesConventions and AbbreviationsAcknowledgementsForewordPaul G. PickowiczINTRODUCTION: Shanghai Filmmaking: Border-crossing PracticesPART I PRODUCTION1. The Business2. Players in the 1920s: Interconnecting, Mediating3. Players in the 1930s: Contestation? Collaboration?PART II PRODUCT4. The Medium: Inside Glocal Mediascapes5. The Narrative (I): Melodrama as a Social Form6. The Narrative (II): Melodramas Fit for All7. The Meaning: Toward a Sentimental EducationEPILOGUE: Toward a Glocal Viewing PublicAppendix I: FilmographyAppendix II: Mingxing PersonnelBibliography