Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist ChinaAt a time when what it means to watch movies keeps changing, this book offers a case study that rethinks the institutional, ideological, and cultural role of film exhibition, demonstrating that film exhibition can produce meaning in itself apart from the films being shown. Cinema Off Screen advances the idea that cinema takes place off screen as much as on screen by exploring film exhibition in China from the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Drawing on original archival research, interviews, and audience recollections, Cinema Off Screen decenters the filmic text and offers a study of institutional operations and lived experiences. Chenshu Zhou details how the screening space, media technology, and the human body mediate encounters with cinema in ways that have not been fully recognized, opening new conceptual avenues for rethinking the ever-changing institution of cinema. |
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active Aidong air cinema air screenings Ang Lee apparatus areas atmosphere attention audiovisual education became Beijing body Casetti chapter Chen Kaige Chinese film cinematic experience context County Cultural Revolution Daoxin describes dianhua jiaoyu dianyingyuan discomfort discourse early environment everyday film projection teams film projectionists film screenings film studies Guomindang hand shadows Hebei huandeng Huang Ibid ideology images interaction interfaces Interview Jiangjin Jiangsu labor lecturing Lunna Mao's Maoist Mass Cinema medium memory mode movie theaters multiplex narrative nostalgia open-air cinema open-air screenings peasants play political production projectionists projector propaganda Province renao revolutionary rural audiences rural film scholars serving workers Shanghai Sichuan slide projection social socialist socialist China socialist film exhibition soldiers space spectator spectatorship Su Tong technologies television theory tion torture viewers viewing village Wang watch films Western Xinjiang xuanchuan Zhang Zhang Yimou Zhenjiang Zhongguo dianying Zhou