The Film Department at the University of Southampton presents: Dr. Victor Fan, King’s College London – Fey Mou: The Presence of an Absence
Tuesday, Nov. 24, University of Southampton (Avenue Campus, Building 65, Lecture Theatre B), 16:00-17:00.
Abstract: Fei Mu (Fey Mou, 1906–51) is best remembered for his 1946 classic Xiaocheng zhi chun (Spring in a Small Town, Wen Hwa Film Company). This film is about the unrequited love between a young doctor, Zhang Zhichen (Li Wei), and his former lover Zhou Yuwen (Wei Wei) now the wife of his best friend, Dai Liyan (Shi Yu). What could have been a melodrama was shot and edited in a highly lyrical style, with a series of long takes, elegant camera movements, and deep staging. Yet many people today forget that Fey was also a prolific writer of film criticism. In this presentation, I analyze Fey’s film theory in association with Spring in a Small Town, to examine how for him, cinema conveys a xingshi guan (view of forms), rensheng guan (view of life), and zhengzhi guan (view of politics). I shall do so by opening a comparative space between his theoretical writings and those of David Bordwell, Kristen Thompson, Christian Metz, and André Bazin on the relationship between art and reality. I argue that Fey’s ontological view is based in his belief in cinema’s ability to make present an absence, that is to allow life, its ontological order, and its regulating principles to manifest themselves without preaching them. Rather, they become palpable when the film image reveals the profound mundaneness of life, in which desire, longing, hope, and their attendant frustration and desolation obstinately hover around the cinematographic image as reality.
Victor Fan is Lecturer at Film Studies, King’s College London and Film Consultant of the Chinese Visual Festival. His articles appeared in journals including Camera Obscura, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Screen and Film History: An International Journal. His book Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory was published in 2015 by the University of Minnesota Press.
All welcome, no registration necessary. Part of U of Southampton’s 'Research in Film Studies: Guest Lecture Programme’. For more information, contact Corey Schultz ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>)
__________________________________________
Dr. Corey Kai Nelson Schultz, FHEA
Lecturer in Film Studies, MA Film Convenor
University of Southampton
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/film/about/staff/chs1g14.page?
--------------------------------------------------------
BAFTSS mailing list
--------------------------------------------------------
To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the BAFTSS list, please visit:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=baftss
-------------------------------------------------------
This mailing list is a free service and is not restricted to members of BAFTSS.
--------------------------------------------------------
|
