英国硕士Research Proposal：Research into the representation of city in the Chinese film
Proposed Topic:
The topic of my investigation is concerned with the relationship between an essential media text — Chinese film — and an essential cultural medium — the Chinese city, as this relationship contributes to exploring the cultural representation of Chinese cinematic cities and Chinese cinema.
我调查的主题是关注的重要媒介文本-中国电影之间的关系和重要的文化中的中国城市，这种关系有助于探索文化代表的中国电影和中国电影的城市。
The research is an analysis of the second identity that http://www.51lunwen.org/movie/ Chinese films offered Chinese cinematic cities while those cities have their own lives and histories. Two representative Chinese cities — Hong Kong and Shanghai — and several representative Chinese films which are made after 1990s and reflect the features of these cities respectively as thematic content will form the core of my investigation.
Research Aims:
The aims of this research are: first, to investigate the ways of interaction and combination between Chinese films and the Chinese cities in cultural, social and historical aspects. Second, to analyze the cinematic representations of Hong Kong, and Shanghaiin their distinctive urban, regional and transnational contexts. Third, to demonstrating the active effects of Chinese films in Chinese urban cultural and cross-cultural communication, so as to help the audiences promote the comprehension of Chinese cinema and Chinese postmodern culture as well as improve the intercultural communications in a global context.
Conceptual Issues:
The research will focus on the following issues:
1. How do Chinese movie directors use the network of artchitectural forms as materials of semiotic to express the features of Chinese film and Chinese urban culture.
2. How do Chinese contemporary films reflect the characteristics of postmodernity of Chinese cinematic cities.
3. As the key role of cultural production in global circulation, how does Chinese film establish new cultural spaces and social relations as the symbols of cinematic cities while represent the globalization visually and narratively.
4. How do Hong Kong films (especially in Kar Wai Wong’s films) combine regional cultures ofShanghaias an example of Chinese multi-cultural interaction and combination.
Background:
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the fortunes of film and the cities have been closely linked on a number of levels. The films have been constantly fascinated with the presentation of the distinctive spaces, lifestyles and human conditions of the cities. The cities as the dominant organizing structures of modern culture have become significant place of interest for a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social science.
Urbanization is along with the expansion of industrial capitalism, and it is the motion of the transform for modernization. Comparing with the former art forms, the scenes of films not only records and reflect the lives in the cities, but also affect and establish the new transform of cultural space and social relations as the symbol of the modern cities.
However, the developments of Chinese cinematic cities and Chinese Cinemas have their own specificities. The city space has played an increasing role in Chinese cinema since 1988-1990 when a first set of city was produced. Since then a new generation of Chinese directors came along and started to pay close attention to combining film aesthetics and specific urban cultural elements in new approaches to shape their personal visual styles. This kind of new creation not only enhanced Chinese cinema’s status and influence in the international stage, but also popularized the new impressions of the Chinese urban culture.
Methodology:
The proposed research will be carried out in four phases:
First, watch film resources which are famous for their Chinese urban cultural communication in global or postmodern context, analyze the specific narrative and visual methods in scene shooting.
Second, collect related
