Review: Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, by Chenshu Zhou

Abstract

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, by Chenshu Zhou Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China by Chenshu Zhou Amir Khan Amir Khan AMIR KHAN is an associate professor of English in the Foreign Studies College at Hunan Normal University. His books include Comedies of Nihilism (2017) and Shakespeare in Hindsight (2016). He is managing editor of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies. He lives and works in China. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Chenshu Zhou, Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. 282 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 102–104. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.102 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Amir Khan; Review: Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, by Chenshu Zhou. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 102–104. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.102 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Chenshu Zhou, Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. 282 pages. Chenshu Zhou has written an extremely reader-friendly account of moviegoing in socialist China. Though she attempts to anchor her discussion in empirical data (taken from the testimony and film remembrances of sixty participants), this is an attempt to put forward a type of film history that engages with where and how a film is shown and consumed. Because her approach ignores “intent” of any kind, whether by a director, a producer, or an actor, it is a type of film criticism without films. Zhou’s study of moviegoing in socialist China from 1949 through the end of the Cold War in 1992 has two fundamental takeaways: (1) that moviegoing in China under Mao created new possibilities for human liberation; and (2) that the conditions of... You do not currently have access to this content.