What is transnational Chinese Cinema today? Or, Welcome to the Sinosphere

ABSTRACT

A decade ago, I wrote a piece called ‘What Is Transnational Cinema? Thinking from the Chinese Situation’. It argued that knowledge is situational and perspectival; what transnational cinema is depends on when and where you are looking from and writing about. It observed and analysed two current phenomena relevant to understanding what Chinese transnational cinema was then: the growth of cross-border Chinese film production involving the People’s Republic, Hong Kong, Taiwan and more, known as ‘Chinese-language cinemas’ (huayu dianying); and the larger phenomenon of globalisation. This article asks what has changed since and proposes ‘cinemas of the Sinosphere’ as an idea to encompass those changes. However, the term refers to two very different phenomena. First, it responds to the higher profile of films that are part of a Chinese cultural sphere but not in a Sinitic language, rendering the idea of ‘Chinese-language cinemas’ inadequate. Second, it acknowledges the re-emergence of the nation-state and what some people call the ‘Second Cold War’ or what I call a ‘Two Globalizations’ phenomenon, and it refers to the cinema of the People’s Republic of China under the conditions of the Belt and Road Initiative and the non-Chinese cinemas that respond to it.

KEYWORDS:

• Sinosphere
• Chinese-language cinemas
• belt and road initiative
• second cold war
• two globalisations
• transnational cinema

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for all the feedback given and questions asked when this work was presented in earlier forms to the New Interdependencies in Chinese Cinema: Glocal Production and Cultural Hybridity conference at University College London (2019); the Cinemas of the Sinosphere: Border-Crossing in Chinese Cinemas conference (2019); and the 100 Years of Chinese Film & Screen: Past, Present and Future conference at the University of Nottingham Ningbo (2021).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This essay was not supported with any grants.

Notes on contributors

Chris Berry

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export Corporation in Beijing, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese-language cinemas and other Chinese-language screen-based media, as well as work from neighbouring countries. Primary publications include China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (co-authored with Mary Farquhar, Columbia University Press, 2006) and Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (co-edited with Luke Robinson, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).