China in Britain: Myths and Realities – China in Britain #1. Film Conference – Uni of Westminster – May 10 2012
Posted: March 11th, 2012 | No Comments »A little advance notice of an upcoming event:
China in Britain: Myths and Realities
China in Britain #1. Film
May 10th 2012 – Time: 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Room 451, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW
The Chinese presence in British cinema dates from James Williamson’s 1900 ‘documentary’ film, Attack on a China Mission, a recreation of that year’s ‘Boxer rebellion’ in which nationalist militants attempted to expel Christian missionaries and other foreigners from China. It was actually filmed in Brighton and Williamson had never visited China. A ‘yellow-face’ tradition followed, most popularly the Fu Manchu movies stretching through to the 1970s craze for kung fu – not until the early 1980s did Asian-British filmmakers finally make some inroads into the British film industry. In 1986 the first truly Chinese-British feature, Ping Pong (1986), reached the screen. Directed by the British-born director Po-Chi Leong, who had directed several features in Hong Kong, the film was set in London’s Chinatown, with a largely unknown cast – except for David Yip, best known as TV’s The Chinese Detective (BBC, 1981-82). Though critically lauded, however, the film failed to find the success it deserved, and neither it nor Mike Newell’s Soursweet (1988) adapted from Timothy Mo’s novel and scripted by Ian McEwan, has so far heralded the arrival of a healthy British-Chinese cinema. While China, Taiwan and Hong Kong-based directors like Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee and Wong Kar-Wai achieved arthouse and now mainstream success in Britain, other British-Chinese features such as BBC Film Peggy Su! (dir. Frances-Anne Solomon, 1998), failed to receive a proper release, despite favourable reviews. More recently Guo Xiaolu’s award winning film, She, A Chinese (2009), a British film in terms of its financing and much of its location, also failed to achieve due recognition from the film trade press and distributors. However a new generation of British-born or British-based Chinese are at the vanguard of positive change, amongst them University of Westminster alumna, Jo Ho, who created the hit BBC television show, Spirit Warriors (the first British series to star a predominantly East Asian cast) and who is now working on several feature films, and award winning director, Belfast born Lab Ky Mo (who will be speaking alongside Soursweet director Mike Newell, China in Britain #2 May 31st).
Programme : RSVP – Places are free but strictly limited so it is essential to register
10.00 Coffee/welcome Anne Witchard, Principal Investigator, and Diana Yeh, Project Research Fellow
10.30 ‘Peking at the Pictures: Early Cinema, the Boxer Rebellion, and Anglo-American Perspectives on China’, Ross Forman (University of Warwick).
11.30 ‘Po-chih Leong, Britain’s Forgotten Filmmaker’, Felicia Chan (University of Manchester) and Andy Willis (University of Salford).
12.30 – 2.00 lunch
2.00 – 2.45 Jo Ho will talk about her work.
2.45 Tea
3.00 Guo Xiaolu (Author and filmmaker) will introduce a screening of her film She, A Chinese followed by Q and A
China in Britain: Myths and Realities is an AHRC funded research network project. Its central aim is to investigate changing conceptions of China and Chineseness in Britain. More details on the series of conferences below – the first is on film and looks good
In the light of China’s emerging global profile as a country of major economic and political impact, Chinese visibility is undergoing significant transformations. Interest in Chineseness has seen an upsurge concomitant with that of our interest in fostering economic relationships with China. Yet when government leaders across Europe are pronouncing the failure of multiculturalism what does it mean to be integrated in Britain as a visible minority? The ultimate aim of the project is to contribute to the ongoing reformulation of both British and Chinese cultural understandings in the context of a multicultural Britain still structured by racialised inequalities and Orientalist stereotypes. Although the British-Chinese voice has been marginal in mainstream cultural and political life it is beginning to make itself heard. This project will explore the current and potential future course of Chinese-British relations and the place of history within it.
A series of day colloquia at the University of Westminster in five different subject areas* will connect up the important yet disparate work being done by cultural historians, literary critics, curators, archivists, contemporary artists, film makers and Sino-British organisations. In bringing these specialists together, the project aims to provide a high profile platform for the discursive elaboration of the changing terms of engagement between British and Chinese people and to widen the terms of debate from diaspora studies and simplistic reductions around identity to an inter-disciplinary network of research practice relevant to contemporary debate.
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