Introspection and Reconstruction: Review of the Centennial Celebration of Chinese Cinema and the 2005 Annual Conference of ACSS

Abstract

Chinese Cinema and Asian Cinema in the Context of Globalization: International Conference of the Centennial Celebration of Chinese Cinema,” the conference co-hosted by Shanghai University, Peking University, and Asian Cinema Studies Society, was held at Peking University and Shanghai University, respectively, from July 6 to 10, 2005. Nearly 200 scholarly papers from 20 countries and regions, including the United States, England, Canada, Japan, Korea, India, Singapore, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, were accepted and discussed. With as many as 33 interest groups, the conference becomes another significant event for the conversation between Eastern and Western film scholars after the successful “International Conference of Film Aesthetics and Theoretical Trend” held by Shanghai University in 2004.2 In addition to celebrating the centennial of Chinese film, the launch of the conference is also related to the rising popularity of Chinese film in academia overseas. Since the 1990s, there is the tendency that film is gradually replacing the traditional art forms, such as novels, to become one of the major tools for the West to observe, imagine, and even construct the concept of the East. This tendency follows the intensified globalization process, the development of information technology, and the rising of audio-visual media.