Regional Filmmaking After Jia Zhangke: Relational Cinematic Space and Ying Liang’s The Other Half

SAGE Open

Mei Yang¹ 

关键词: regional film;    relational cinematic space;    discourse;    symbolic violence;   

DOI  :  10.1177/2158244015603104

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Sage Journals

【 摘 要 】

This article examines Ying Liang’s films to illustrate Chinese independent filmmakers’ growing propensity for representing regional space through innovative cinematic techniques. As one of the most conspicuous directors onstage in the 2000s, Ying Liang rekindles independent regional film following the legacy of Jia Zhangke’s hometown trilogy. Varying shooting angles and camera positions, his exemplar work of formalistic experimentation, The Other Half (Ling yiban, 2006), presents space as a pivot of relations, within which the position of self and the situation of the local are intertwined. In line with Doreen Massey’s proposition for a spatial turn in theoretical conceptions, I argue that Ying Liang’s exploration of relational cinematic space, between on-screen and offscreen, from selfhood to nation, continues to challenge the legitimacy of the foretold metanarrative of national progression in which the countryside and inland cities belong to a bygone time that ought to be replaced in a forward-looking timeline. The explosive endings characteristic of Ying’s film oeuvre, in which all the imminent calamities happening to the region and its inhabitants eventually break out, belie the promise of a bright future told by the state and underline the symbolic violence endured by the local.

【 授权许可】

CC BY