Synopses & Reviews
In Painting the City Red, Yomi Braester examines the role of the cinema and theater in debates about urban planning in China from 1949 to the present. He shows how the screen and stage arts propagated and regulated visions of the future city. In transforming the city into a visual subject, films and dramas rallied popular support for urbanization policies and later carved out a space for criticism. They weighed in on issues such as building an ideal socialist city, integrating China's metropolises into the globalizing economy, and preserving architectural heritage.
Combining extensive archival research, material from interviews with many leading filmmakers and urban planners, and close readings of scripts and images, Braester assesses the stakes in stage and screen productions that address urban development. He discusses in detail the cinematic treatment of specific endeavors and sites, including the promotion of public works and housing projects in Beijing's impoverished Outer City, the spoofing of a glitzy Orange County-themed Beijing suburb, and the vilifying of Shanghai's Nanjing Road as a symbol of bourgeois decadence. He also explores cinema's role in criticizing the gentrification of Beijing's Old City and Taipei's veterans' villages, aggrandizing the monumental Tiananmen Square, and calling for the preservation of the vernacular architecture of courtyard houses. Braester shows that stage plays and films provide insights into the spatial reorganization and historical rewriting of Chinese cities. The cinema has contributed to the imposition of state power, the formation of communities, the struggle for civil society, the establishing of cultural norms, and the emergence of new urban visions.
Review
andldquo;Yomi Braesterandrsquo;s Painting the City Red is not only a signal contribution to our understanding of urban space and visual culture in China, but one of the most thorough explorations of the city in cinema of any kind to appear in recent years. Braester is a matchless guide to the ways film and theatrical productions have been used to shape the future city, foster new spatial practices, and mediate between visions of a vanishing architectural past and the metropolis to come. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the lightspeed urbanization of contemporary China, and how the creative destruction of its cities has played out on screen and stage.andrdquo;andmdash;Thomas J. Campanella, author of The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World
Review
andldquo;Yomi Braester takes us beyond this notion of film as a time capsule for a vanishing reality. . . . Braesterandrsquo;s expertly localized study is essential reading for devotees of Sinophone film who lack intimate knowledge of contemporary urban culture in the PRC and Taiwan.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In this well-researched work, Yomi Braester takes a fresh look at Chinese urban cinema and stage plays from 1949 to the 2008 Olympics. . . . Painting the City Red will remain an important reference book for scholars of urban cinema and urbanization for years to come.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;Braesterandrsquo;s point remains valid: as a device that mediates between state and non-state actors, visual media play a crucial and often overlooked role in the creation of new forms of urbanism. Any scholar of film, urban studies, and Asian history in general would be well served to read this book.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[T]he book offers rich insights into how Chinese cinema has responded to urban policies, participating in debates on how the city should develop, disseminating images of power, documenting alternative ways of using public space, and, in recent years, helping preserve historical memory in contexts of rapid change.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Painting the City Red is an exciting intervention in studies on cinema and the city. It provides a wealth of fascinating original research and insight into the way Chinese cities have appeared on film. But, equally important, it also argues for a new approach to the topic. Moving beyond analysis of the films themselves, it also includes remarkable research into the negotiations amongst city planners, politicians, developers and residents that shape the vision of the city.andrdquo;andmdash;Chris Berry, Goldsmiths, University of London
Synopsis
Painting the City Red illuminates the dynamic relationship between the visual media, particularly film and theater, and the planning and development of cities in China and Taiwan, from the emergence of the Peopleandrsquo;s Republic in 1949 to the staging of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Yomi Braester argues that the transformation of Chinese cities in recent decades is a result not only of Chinaandrsquo;s abandonment of Maoist economic planning in favor of capitalist globalization but also of a shift in visual practices. Rather than simply reflect urban culture, movies and stage dramas have facilitated the development of new perceptions of space and time, representing the future city variously as an ideal socialist city, a metropolis integrated into the global economy, and a site for preserving cultural heritage.
Drawing on extensive archival research, interviews with leading filmmakers and urban planners, and close readings of scripts and images, Braester describes how films and stage plays have promoted and opposed official urban plans and policies as they have addressed issues such as demolition-and-relocation plans, the preservation of vernacular architecture, and the global real estate market. He shows how the cinematic rewriting of historical narratives has accompanied the spatial reorganization of specific urban sites, including Nanjing Road in Shanghai; veteransandrsquo; villages in Taipei; and Tiananmen Square, centuries-old courtyards, and postmodern architectural landmarks in Beijing. In Painting the City Red, Braester reveals the role that film and theater have played in mediating state power, cultural norms, and the struggle for civil society in Chinese cities.
Synopsis
A historical account of how films and theater pieces created in the PRC (and Taiwan) since 1949 have interacted with state and local governments, developers and city planners, and ordinary residents in the dramatic urbanization of China.
Synopsis
An examination of the role of cinema and theater in representing urban transformations in China from 1949 to the present.
About the Author
Yomi Braester is Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China.