Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr. Chris Berry

Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre


My work centres on Chinese cinemas (including those of the People’s Republic, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and diasporic China). It has also extended to cover Chinese television, Chinese independent video documentary, Chinese new media and computer-mediated communication, Korean cinema, queer Asian cinema, and more. My interests include cinema’s role in the production of national, transnational, and local cultures and identities, and the connection between cinematic forms and socio-political developments, for example the connection of realism and melodrama to modernity, or the development of Chinese television and independent documentary and the expansion of public discourse.

Areas of supervision

My current PhD students are working on various topics, including blogging and self-writing; Taiwan audiences and their relation to Taiwan film; Indian diasporic cinema; the Indian classical music today and its hybridization within India; the Korean animation industry; and filmmakers’ survival strategies in the globalizing film industries of Japan and Britain.

Research interests

I am currently working on queer Asian cinema, realisms in Chinese cinemas, television and public discourse in China, and various aspects of Korean cinema.

Selected publications

(with Lu Xinyu and Lisa Rofel), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

(with Kim Soyoung and Lynn Spigel), Electronic Elsewheres: Media,
Technology, and Social Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2010). 

(with Nicola Liscutin and Jonathan D. Mackintosh), Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).

(edited with Ying Zhu), TV China (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

(ed.) Chinese Films in Focus II (London: British Film Institute, 2008).

(with Mary Farquhar) China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006).

(edited with Feii Lu) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005). 

Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004).

(ed.) Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003). 

(edited with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue) Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

(trans.) Ni Zhen, Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Origins of China’s Fifth Generation Filmmakers (Duke University Press, 2002).

Book Series

 
TransAsia Screen Cultures

Queer Asia

Book chapters

"New Documentary in China: Public Space, Public Television," in Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology and Social Space, edited by Lynn Spigel, Kim Soyoung, and Chris Berry, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p.95-116.

"Jia Zhangke and the Temporality of Postsocialist Chinese Cinema: In the Now (and Then)," in Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures, edited by Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger (Bristol: Intellect Book, 2009), 111-129.

"States of Play," in Faster, Higher, edited by Nina Ernst and susan pui san lok (London: Film & Video Umbrella, 2009), n.p.

"Leaving the Factory: Thoughts on West of the Tracks" in Leaving the Factory: Wang Bing's Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, ed. Sukhdev Sandhu (New York: Texte und Töne, 2009), pp.17-22.

"Staging Gay Life in China: Zhang Yuan and East Palace, West Palace," in Chinese Connections: Critical Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora, edited by Tan See-Kam, Peter X Feng, and Gina Marchetti, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), pp.165-176, originally published in Jump Cut 42 (December 1998), pp.84-89.

"Re-writing Cinema: Markets, Languages, Cultures in Taiwan," in Re-Writing Culture in Taiwan, ed. Shih Fang-long, Stuart Thompson, and Paul F. Tremlett (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), pp. 140-153.
  “Cinema,” in The Cambridge Companion to China, ed. Kam Louie. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 297-317.

“Chinese Cinema,” in The Cinema Book, ed. Pam Cook, (London: BFI, third edition, 2007), pp. 192-195.

"Scream and Scream Again: Korean Modernity as a House of Horrors in the Films of Kim Ki-young" in Francis Gateward (ed.), Made in Korea: Contemporary Cinema and Society, (Binghampton: SUNY Press, 2007), pp.99-114.

"Haunted Realism: Postcoloniality and the Cinema of Chang Tsochi" in Darrell William Davis and Ru-Shou Robert Chen (eds), Taiwan Cinema: Politics, Popularity and State of the Arts (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 33-50.

"Zeki Demirkubuz: By the Light of the Dark" in Rosten Ozturk (ed.), Kader: Zeki Demirkubuz (Ankara: Dost Kitabevi, 2006), pp19-25 (In Turkish). Republished in Korean in An-Cha Flubacher-Rhim (ed.), Turkish Cinema, (Jeonju: Jeonju International Film Festival: 2007), pp.68-78.

"Independently Chinese: Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue and Chinese Documentary" in Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (eds), From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), pp.102-122.

"Stellar Transit: Bruce Lee's Body, or, Chinese Masculinity in a Transnational Frame" in Larissa Heinrich and Fran Martin (eds), Modernity Incarnate (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2006), pp.218-234. Published in Chinese in Wenyi Yanjiu (Literature and Art Studies), No.179, 2007, pp.94-104.

"Getting Real: Chinese Documentaries, Chinese Postsocialism" in Ping Jie (ed.), A New Look at Chinese Contemporary Documentary (Lingyan Xiangkan: Haiwai Xuezhe Ping Dangdai Zhongguo Jilupian), (Shanghai: Wenhui Press, 2006), pp. 69-83, and in Zhang Zhen (ed.), China's Urban Generation (Duke University Press, 2007), pp.115-134.

"From National Cinema to Cinema and the National: Chinese-Language Cinema and Hou Hsiao Hsien's "Taiwan Trilogy"" in Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen (eds), Theorising the National (London: British Film Institute, 2006), pp.148-157.

Journal Articles

"The New Taiwan Cinema and After," Z filmtidsskrift #110 (2010, in Norwegian), 2-11.

"Hou Hsiao-Hsien -- A Cinema of Indirectness," Z filmtidsskrift #110 (2010, in Norwegian), 12-21.

(with Laikwan Pang), "Introduction, or, What's in an 's'?", in Journal of Chinese Cinemas 2, no.1 (2008), 3-8.

"Brokeback: The Chinese Side of the Mountain,” Film Quarterly 60, no.3 (2007), 32-7.

“The National in Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Agency and Resistance,” World Cinema (in Chinese) (Beijing, 2006, no.1), 4-18.

with Mary Farquhar, "Speaking Bitterness: History, Media, and Nation in Twentieth Century China," Historiography East & West 2:1 (2005), 116-143.

“Haunted Realism: Notes on the Cinema of Chang Tsochi and Rethinking Realism,” Dianying Xinshang (Taipei), no.120 (2004), 91-5.

“The Sacred, the Profane, and the Domestic: Locating the Cinema of Cui Zi’en,” Positions 12, no.1 (2004), 195-202.

“Full Service Cinema: The South Korean Cinema Success Story (So Far), ” in Text and Context of Korean Cinema: Crossing Borders, ed. Young-Key Kim Renaud et. al., Sigur Center Asia Paper No.17 (2003), 7-16.

“The Documentary Production Process as a Counter-Public: Notes on an Inter-Asian Mode and the Example of Kim Dong-Won, ” Inter-Asia 4:1 (2003), pp.139-145.

with Mary Farquhar, “From National Cinemas to Cinema and the National: Rethinking the National in Transnational Chinese Cinemas, ” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 4:2 (2001), 109-122.