Floating, (In)visible, Off-Screen: Voices and Bodies in the New Chinese Documentary

A part of the Fall 2007 Chinese Film Series

Monday, 12/03/2007
12:00PM - 1:00PM

Host Department: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)

Speaker: Berenice Reynaud, California Institute of the Arts. A lecture presentation on contemporary Chinese documentary filmmaking. Based on the theories of Michel Chion, Pascal Bonitzer and Serge Daney on the relationship between image and sound, and in particular between the field of the visible ("on-screen") and the voice in cinema, Berenice Reynaud proposes to study the relationship between the voice and the body in the "New Chinese Documentary Movement." Coming after years of mainstream documentary, in which image and sound were superimposed together through a disembodied, all-knowing, official voice-over commentary, the independent video documentaries of the early 1990s on (starting with Wu Wenguang's "Bumming in Beijing") can be read as a series of multiple, sometimes contradictory strategies to reinsert the voice and attach it to a body. She will describe the evolution of the "movement" from this point of view, ending with new levels of sophistication (off-screen voices, voices in non-Chinese languages, voices that function as a "menace" threatening the integrity of the screen image. Berenice Reynaud is the author of "Nouvelles Chines, nouveaux cinemas" and "Hou Hsiao-hsien's 'A City of Sadness.'" She teaches film theory, history and criticism at the California Institute of Arts and is Co-Curator of the film series at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT).