Why Do Chinese Filmmakers Love Melons? and Other Questions from a New Digital Archive of Early Cinema
How did the early decades of Chinese cinema differ from anywhere else in the world? How can we make meaningful distinctions ‒ or connections ‒ between the cinematic languages of different film industries? Take melons. Why do they roll through Chinese cinema history, from early days to the twenty-first century? And how does their meaning in Chinese films like Laborer’s Love (1922) or Rickshaw Boy (1982), differ from, say, North American films like Melvin van Peebles’ Watermelon Man (1970)? When it comes to cinematic language, can we really compare melons and melons? In this presentation, Christopher Rea will share techniques for developing an original research project, using illustrative examples from a new digital humanities archive on early Chinese cinema. The Chinese Film Classics Project (chinesefilmclassics.org) is an ongoing international effort to make early Chinese cinema history more accessible to the English-speaking world.

Christopher Rea is Professor of Chinese and former Director of the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia.
Date: 24 April 2023, 17:00 (Monday, 1st week, Trinity 2023)
Venue: Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury Road OX2 6LU
Venue Details: Ho Tim Seminar Room (first floor)
Speaker: Professor Christopher Rea (University of British Columbia)
Organising department: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Organiser: Dr Lena Henningsen (University of Freiburg)
Organiser contact email address: information@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Host: Dr Lena Henningsen (University of Freiburg)
Booking required?: Not required
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editor: Clare Orchard