Cinematic Landscapes
Cinematic Landscapes
Observations on the Visual Arts and Cinema of China and Japan
China and Japan both have traditional art forms that have been highly developed and long studied. In these original essays, noted film and art scholars explore how the spatial consciousness, compositional techniques, and construction of images in these traditional and modern art forms also inform filmmaking in the two countries, so that film and art share the same culturally defined "methods of seeing."
This first major study of the relationship between Chinese and Japanese art and film brings together writers from the United States, Europe, Australia, China, and Japan, including Japan's well-known film critic Sato Tadao and Beijing Film Academy's Ni Zhen, screenwriter of the Oscar-nominated film Raise the Red Lantern. The essays discuss the influence of the traditional arts, including scroll painting and printmaking, on Chinese and Japanese cinema and demonstrate that national cinemas cannot be completely understood without considering their indigenous traditions.
This brilliant and sumptuous volume . . . demonstrates that we have only scratched the surface in Western discussions of Chinese and Japanese film. Beautifully and profusely illustrated, lovingly indexed, and absolutely immersed in the culture it examines, Cinematic Landscapes is entirely successful in exploring the many links between the centuries-old graphic tradition of Japanese painting and scroll making and the more recent discipline of the cinema. . . . Cinematic Landscapes pushes Western knowledge of Asian cinema many steps forward and persuasively serves as a model for future inquiry in this area of study.
Not only will specialists in Asian film benefit from this book, but many scholars working in Asian regional studies, Asian art and literature, as well as film history and criticism undoubtedly will find this anthology of interest. It is valuable as a textbook in courses on art and the cinema, Asian cinema, or film form and aesthetics. The work makes an important contribution to Asian film and art scholarship.
An elegant volume whose luxury factor approaches the coffee-table book and whose superlative essays guarantee that the reader will not watch these films the same way again.
- Acknowledgments
- Introductory Remarks
- Editors' Introduction
- Table: Major Historical Periods
- 1. Contrasts in Chinese and Japanese Art (Sherman Lee)
- Part One
- Film and the Visual Arts in China: An Introduction (Douglas Wilkerson)
- 2. Chinese Visual Representation: Painting and Cinema (Hǎo Dàzhēng)
- 3. Classical Chinese Painting and Cinematographic Signification (Ní Zhèn)
- 4. Post-Socialist Strategies: An Analysis of Yellow Earth and Black Cannon Incident (Chris Berry and Mary Ann Farquhar)
- 5. The Pain of a Half Taoist: Taoist Principles, Chinese Landscape Painting, and King of the Children (Ān Jǐngfū)
- 6. Judou: An Experiment in Color and Portraiture in Chinese Cinema (Jenny Kwok Wah Lau)
- Part Two
- Film and the Visual Arts in Japan: An Introduction (Thomas Rimer)
- 7. The Influence of Traditional Aesthetics on the Japanese Film (Donald Richie)
- 8. Japanese Cinema and the Traditional Arts: Imagery, Technique, and Cultural Context (Satō Tadao)
- 9. Genroku chūshingura and the Primacy of Perception (D. William Davis)
- 10. Ways of Seeing Japanese Prints and Films: Mizoguchi's Utamaro (Dudley Andrew)
- 11. Kobayashi's Widescreen Aesthetic (Cynthia Contreras)
- 12. Playing with Form: Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge and the "Creative Print" (Linda C. Ehrlich)
- 13. Playing with Space: Ozu and Two-Dimensional Design in Japan (Kathe Geist)
- 14. Gate of Flesh(tones): Color in the Japanese Cinema (David Desser)
- Filmography
- Selected Works
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
