Migration, Mobilization, and Moving Images: Imagination of "Nanyang" in 1930s Chinese Cinema.

Since the 18th century, “Nanyang” (Southeast Asia) has been a destination for Chinese migrants, who predominantly worked at mines and plantations. The overseas Chinese experience of colonial rule and anti-colonial sentiment in early 20th century “Nanyang” resonated and interacted with the political situation in China, galvanizing a strong fascination with “Nanyang” in intellectuals and popular media. These concerns were reflected in a handful of 1930s Chinese films, for instance, Revenge in the Volcano’s Shadow (1932) and Maternal Radiance (1933). This talk explores the imagery and imagination of “Nanyang” in these two Shanghai leftist films. In particular, it considers the realistic and symbolic representations of Nanyang’s natural environments (such as volcanoes and gold mines), in relation to colonial oppression and the eruption of revolutionary fervor. Alongside its focus on visual renditions, this paper also examines how these two partial sound films (now viewable only as silent, since the sound was recorded separately from the film) made full use of music’s power to inspire the film audience’s imagination of an exotic land with revolutionary vitalities (in Revenge) and to mobilize their sense of indignation and resentment against colonialism (Maternal Radiance). Given the shared cultural roots and linguistic heritage of Nanyang’s oversea Chinese populace (who spoke Cantonese, Minnan and Teochew dialects), the region was at once a physical migration terminus, a locale embodying symbolic implications, and a significant overseas market for Republican Chinese films. This talk attempts to unravel the intricate entanglement of migration, mobilization and circulation within and surrounding 1930s Chinese cinema.

BIO:
Ling Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at SUNY Purchase College. She holds an ACLS post-doc fellowship and is a visiting scholar at Columbia University for the academic year of 2019-20, while completing her book manuscript, Sounding Screen Ambiance: Acoustic Culture and Transmediality in 1920s-1940s Chinese Cinema. She received her PhD from the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and specializes in film sound, Chinese-language cinema and opera, documentary, as well as film and urbanism. Zhang has published academic articles in Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Film Quarterly, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, The New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, Asian Cinema, among others.

Sponsored by the East Asian Studies program and Film and Media Studies