Hongmei Sun It is no surprise that the character of Sun Wukong, better known as Monkey or the Monkey King in the West, has made so many appearances in the history of Chinese animation, given his longstanding popularity in China among children and adults alike. As the protagonist of the sixteenth century classic novel Journey … Continue reading Monkey King and Chinese Animation
Isabel Galwey Shaopeng Chen’s PhD dissertation examines Chinese animation works for cinema between 1995—the year that the domestic production of Chinese animation ceased to be a state-run effort—and 2015, focusing on what he describes as a “new generation” of animations produced during this period. Chen uses this term both to differentiate films produced after 1995 … Continue reading The New Generation Chinese Cinema Animation (1995-2015): Industry and Aesthetics, Ph.D. dissertation, by Shaopeng Chen, University of Southampton, UK, November 2017. 328 pp.
Eileen Chang; translated by Panpan Yang The word “cartoon” has a history of less than ten years in China. However, probably all moviegoers know Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. “Cartoon” originally referred to all single-panel satirical comics, newsreel comics, life comics, serial comics and so on, but the kind of cartoon I want to talk about … Continue reading On the Future of Cartoons (Eileen Chang, 1937)
Rolf Giesen The Cartoon Forum is a yearly event organized by Cartoon Brussels that brings together TV animation producers from all over Europe to Toulouse, France. Although you will see a variety of incredible work at the Cartoon Forum, the sad truth is that TV is no longer the partner for animation it once was … Continue reading Towards a Eurasian Model of Animated Filmmaking
Download PDF Sean Metzger Many years ago, I published an article on Disney’s Mulan (1998), of which I am frequently reminded by the warblers on UCLA’s campus. A mainstay of karaoke events in the residence halls, the music of Mulan continues to serve as a reference point for many US-based youth. I overhear excerpts in … Continue reading Compositing Japanese Imperialism in Two Chinese Animated Features: A Jewish Girl in Shanghai and Xi Bai Po 2: Wang Er Xiao
Shasha Liu Daisy Yan Du’s PhD dissertation examines the transnational, national, and regional cultural undercurrents in the construction of national identity in Chinese animated films between the 1940s and 1970s. Du argues against a monolithic and timeless notion of Chinese identity and seeks to showcase the interconnections among national identity, politics and the arts by … Continue reading On the Move: The Trans/national Animated film in 1940s-1970s China, Ph.D. dissertation, by Daisy Yan Du, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, May 2012. 227 pp.
Download PDF Shaopeng Chen Weihua Wu’s PhD dissertation examines how literature, arts, social text, and the circumstances of new media form what he calls “digital cinema,” “computer graphics,” the “cultural interface,” ”visual effects,” and “new animation” in a postsocialist China, by using an interdisciplinary approach that includes visual anthropology, film history, literary criticism, and cultural … Continue reading Animation in Postsocialist China: Visual Narrative, Modernity, and Digital Culture, Ph.D. dissertation, by Weihua Wu, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2006. 272 pp.
Download PDF Hua Li Why does a school of tadpoles keep mistaking other water creatures for their mama? Why does a cuckoo arrive late to remind farmers it is time to sow their seed grain? What makes the arrogant Monkey King admit his incompetence? These questions are beyond the moral lessons provided in animated films … Continue reading Animating Science and Technology: From Little Tadpoles to the Space Monkey (1950s–1980s)
Download PDF Rolf Giesen Cartoon Movie, a yearly event that takes place in France every March, is sponsored by CARTOON, an international non-profit association based in Brussels. Cartoon Movie was first inaugurated at the Babelsberg Studios in Germany. CARTOON’s remit is to support the European animation industry by organizing several types of events through the … Continue reading German Animation and China
Download PDF John A. Crespi Defining manhua—usually translated as “caricature” or “cartoon”—is like trying to put spilled ink back into the bottle. [1] The word should be warning enough. Where the second character for the second syllable, hua, refers to pictorial art in general, the first character, man, connotes several situations: a state of overflow and … Continue reading The Pictorial Turn and China’s Manhua Modernity, 1925-1960