The Post-subjectivity of Chinese Personal Cinema — The Cloud in Her Room (Dir. Zheng Lu Xinyuan 2020) and Farewell, My Hometown (Dir. Wang Erzhuo 2021)

초록

This study examines two recent independent films from China which deal with certain aspects of the directors’ personal memories and experience. The Cloud in Her Room (她房間裡的雲 Dir. Zheng Lu Xinyuan 鄭陸心源 2020) and Farewell, My Hometown (再見, 樂園 Dir. Wang Erzhuo 王爾卓2021) share a number of similarities that represent noteworthy changes in Chinese cinema. I approach the two films as “personal cinema” and argue that the films do not gravitate to the question of the self despite their origin in biographical sources. I interpret such characteristics of Chinese personal cinema as the cultural symptom of the end of subjectivity and call it “post-subjectivity.” The two films can be located in the intersection between film and video art, and such slippage into non-narrative art greatly helps the films avoid revisiting the quest for subjectivity. The two films also develop intimate and private materials into the defiant stance of contemporary Chinese women. This study employs the term of “post-subjectivity” in order to indicate not only such characteristics of the films but also to explore the media environments of contemporary (Chinese) society in which the films were produced. “Post-subjectivity” also implies my reading strategy which is influenced by the philosophical discourses of New Materialism and Posthumanism.

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