This Is Not Reality (Ceci n'est pas la réalité): Capturing the Imagination of the People

This Is Not Reality (Ceci n'est pas la réalité): Capturing the Imagination of the People - Creativity, the Chinese Subaltern, and Documentary Storytelling

How has documentary (re)presented subaltern creativity? Focusing on post-socialist, globalising China, I examine documentary narratives by and about the creative subaltern originating from Chinese “cool cities” and expanding in the virtual space of global digital media. In these narratives, the creative subaltern has appeared obliquely, tangential to other narratives, subordinate to internationally recognised artists, or with a more central role, as the author or the protagonist of documentary films.

I analyse these narratives' entanglement with elitist definitions of creativity, the representation of subaltern reality, the expression of subjectivity, and the tension between the political and the personal.

Professor Paola Voci specializes in Chinese visual cultures, and, in particular, documentary, animation, and other hybrid digital and postdigital video practices. She is the author of China on Video, a book that analyses and theorises light movies made for and viewed on computer and mobile screens, and co-editor of Screening China's Soft Power, an investigation on the role played by film and media in shaping China's global image. Her current research projects focus on activist sinology's digital storytelling and on animateur practices' contribution to the archaeology and ontology of the moving image.

Co-hosted by Media, Film and Communication and Languages and Cultures.

Save this event

Google CalendarYahoo Calendar iCalendar