Description

Book Synopsis
At a time when what it means to watch movies keeps changing, this book offers a case study that rethinks the institutional, ideological, and cultural role of film exhibition, demonstrating that film exhibition can produce meaning in itself apart from the films being shown. Cinema Off Screen advances the idea that cinema takes place off screen as much as on screen by exploring film exhibition in China from the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Drawing on original archival research, interviews, and audience recollections, Cinema Off Screen decenters the filmic text and offers a study of institutional operations and lived experiences. Chenshu Zhou details how the screening space, media technology, and the human body mediate encounters with cinema in ways that have not been fully recognized, opening new conceptual avenues for rethinking the ever-changing institution of cinema.

Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: "Projecting Cinema"
1. Space
2. Labor
3. Multimedia
4. Atmosphere
5. Discomfort
6. Screen
Postscript: Recognizing Cinema

Appendix: Interviewee Profiles
Character Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Cinema Off Screen Moviegoing in Socialist China

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    A Hardback by Chenshu Zhou

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      Book details

      Publisher University of California Press
      Published 6 July 2021
      ISBN-13 9780520343382
      978-0520343382
      ISBN-10 0520343387
      Also in:
      Films, cinema Far-left political ideologies and movements Left-of-centre democratic ideologies and movements

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      At a time when what it means to watch movies keeps changing, this book offers a case study that rethinks the institutional, ideological, and cultural role of film exhibition, demonstrating that film exhibition can produce meaning in itself apart from the films being shown. Cinema Off Screen advances the idea that cinema takes place off screen as much as on screen by exploring film exhibition in China from the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Drawing on original archival research, interviews, and audience recollections, Cinema Off Screen decenters the filmic text and offers a study of institutional operations and lived experiences. Chenshu Zhou details how the screening space, media technology, and the human body mediate encounters with cinema in ways that have not been fully recognized, opening new conceptual avenues for rethinking the ever-changing institution of cinema.

      Table of Contents
      List of Illustrations
      Acknowledgments

      Introduction: "Projecting Cinema"
      1. Space
      2. Labor
      3. Multimedia
      4. Atmosphere
      5. Discomfort
      6. Screen
      Postscript: Recognizing Cinema

      Appendix: Interviewee Profiles
      Character Glossary
      Notes
      Bibliography
      Index

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