China’s Igeneration : cinema and moving image culture for the twenty-first century

Abstract

Chinese cinema is moving beyond the theatrical screen. While the country is now the world’s second-largest film market in addition to being the world’s second-largest economy, visual culture in China is increasingly multi-platform and post-cinematic.1 Digital technology, network-based media and portable media player platforms have contributed to the creation of China’s new cinema of dispersion or ‘iGeneration cinema,’ which is oriented as much toward individual, self-directed viewers as toward traditional distribution channels such as the box office, festival, or public spaces. Visual culture in China is no longer dominated by the technology and allure of the big screen, if indeed it ever was. While China’s film industry still produces ‘traditional’ box-office blockbusters and festival-ready documentaries, their impact and influence is increasingly debatable. This volume of essays captures the richness and diversity of China’s contem- porary moving image culture, while suggesting that familiar notions of ‘cinema’ must be reconceptualized as just one of many platforms and experiences available within that broader culture. In the process, each essay contributes to the larger project of mapping out where this moving image culture exists within the context of China’s individualizing, consumption-oriented, urban and technologically mutable post-WTO society.