Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture

<p><b>Honourable Mention Best Monograph Award BAFTSS Publication Awards 2022</b> <p/>Sheldon Lu's wide-ranging new book investigates how filmmakers and visual artists from mainland China Hong Kong and Taiwan have envisioned China as it transitions from a socialist to a globalized capitalist state. It examines how the modern nation has been refashioned and re-imagined in order to keep pace with globalization and transnationalism. <p/>At the heart of Lu's analysis is a double movement in the relationship between nation and transnationalism in the Chinese post-socialist state. He considers the complexity of how the Chinese economy is integrated in the global capitalist system while also remaining a repressive body politic with mechanisms of control and surveillance. He explores the interrelations of the local the national the subnational and the global as China repositions itself in the world. <p/>Lu considers examples from feature and documentary film mainstream and marginal cinema and a variety of visual arts: photography painting digital video architecture and installation. His close case studies include representations of class masculinity and sexuality in contemporary Taiwanese and Chinese cinema; the figure of the sex worker as a symbol of modernity and mobility; and artists' representations of Beijing at the time of the 2008 Olympics.</p>