Manoeuvring around mainland China’s censors and pushing back against threats of lawsuits, online harassment, and physical violence, #MeToo activists shed a particularly harsh light on the treatment of women in the cinema and entertainment industries. Focusing on films from the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora, this book considers how female directors shape Chinese visual politics through the depiction of the look, the stare, the leer, the glare, the glimpse, the glance, the queer and the oppositional gaze in fiction and documentary filmmaking. In the years leading up to and following in the wake of #MeToo, these cosmopolitan women filmmakers offer innovative angles on body image, reproduction, romance, family relations, gender identity, generational differences, female sexuality, sexual violence, sex work, labor migration, career options, minority experiences, media access, feminist activism and political rights within the rapidly changing Chinese cultural orbit.

Gina Marchetti serves as Chair of Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt Institute. Her books include Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction> (California, 1993) and Citing China: Politics, Postmodernism, and World Cinema (Hawai’i, 2018).

Acknowledgements

Note on Romanization

1. Introduction: #MeToo and the Visual Politics of Transnational Chinese Cinema

2. The Look and the Stare: Looked Over and Overlooked in The Truth About Beauty (2014), My Way (2012), and Unfinished (2013)

3. The Leer and the Glare: Voyeurism and State Surveillance in Hooligan Sparrow (2016) and Angels Wear White (2017)

4. A Glimpse of the Glance: Women Scrutinize Men in Female Directors (2012) and Girls Always Happy (2018)

5. The Queer Gaze Across the Gay-Straight Generational Divide: Small Talk (2017) and A Dog Barking at the Moon (2019)

6. The Alienated Gaze and the Activist Eye: Gender, Class, and Politics in Lotus (2012) and Outcry and Whisper (2020)

7. Oppositional Optics: The View from Hong Kong

8. From Activism to Exile: Our Youth in Taiwan (2018) and To Singapore, with Love (2013)

9. Viral Visions: The Pandemic Archive in Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings (2017) and Many Undulating Things (2019)

10. Conclusion: The View from the Chinese Diaspora in The Farewell (2019)

Filmography

Bibliography

Index