Felicia Chan

Maggie Cheung, ‘une Chinoise’: Acting and Agency in the Realm of Transnational Stardom

‘Pourquoi une chinoise?’ asks Jose Murano (Lou Castel), the replacement for director Rene Vidal (Jean-Pierre Leaud) in the latter half of Irma Vep (1996, France), Olivier Assayas’ meta-filmic remake of Louis Feuillade’s serial Les Vampires (1915, France). In Assayas’ film, Vidal is an ageing director, who is also in the process of remaking the classic French serial, but has taken the decision to cast Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung (playing herself) in the eponymous role. Vidal offers this reason for doing so: ‘No French actress can be Irma Vep after Musidora — it’s impossible, it’s blasphemy.’ He claims to have selected her for the part based on a ‘very cheap cinema’ he had seen her in in Marrakech. Halfway through the production, Vidal experiences a creative and mental breakdown and is replaced by Murano, an out-of-work film-maker on welfare benefits, who takes a more nationalist view. For Murano, the casting of a Chinese actress in a French role seemed unthinkable, asserting that ‘Irma Vep is working class Paris [Paris populaire]. Les Vampires is not Fu Manchu.’

British Chinese Short Films: Challenging the Limits of the Sinophone

In an article published in a special issue of the Journal for Chinese Cinemas, considering the possibility of shifting transnational Chinese film studies from a diasporic framework to a Sinophonic one, we argued for the retention of the former against the latter on grounds that the notion of diaspora continues to speak to the historical and geographical dimensions of Chinese cinemas outside of China, whereas the notion of the Sinophone, delineated according to linguistic communities, may further marginalise non-Chinese-language Chinese film-making, such as films addressing the British-born Chinese experience (Chan and Willis, 2012). In that article we discussed two relatively unknown, but nevertheless significant, feature films made by or about British Chinese people: Ping Pong (dir. Po-chih Leong, 1986) and Soursweet (dir. Mike Newell, 1988). In this chapter, we extend the argument further by offering an analysis of four short films produced in the UK: Chinese Whispers (dir. David Yip, 2000), Blue Funnel (dir. Paul Mayeda Berges, 1997), Red (dir. Rosa Fong, 1995), and Granny’s Ghost (dir. Lab Ky Mo, 2008). Each of these works, despite their limited exposure at film festivals and occasionally on television, clearly speak to the challenges of minority cultural representation in British film-making.

Manchester’s Chinese Arts Centre: A Case Study in Strategic Cultural Intervention

From its initial inception as a focus for arts and culture within the Chinese community of Manchester and the Northwest, to its recent rebranding as the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, the Chinese Arts Centre’s history has intersected with a number of shifts and changes within the arts in the United Kingdom. Here we ask: What can looking at an institution such as the Chinese Arts Centre tell us about the shifting debates and arguments about the place and role of (Chinese) culture within society and the cultural geography of a city? What can such a case study tell us about what artists, styles, and taste formations are dominant at particular historical moments, and what insights can it offer into the political economy of arts funding at these junctures?

British Chinese Cinema and the Struggle for Recognition, Even on the Margins

British Chinese films have struggled to find a significant presence in the writings of British cinema history, even within debates on minority cinemas, such as Black British or British Asian cinema, which have since the 1980s established a canon of margins of sorts. This chapter argues for an inclusive historiography that places British Chinese filmmaking within these wider debates, through the analysis of films such as Ping Pong (1986), Soursweet (1988), Peggy Su (1997), and Cut Sleeve Boys (2006), which not only intersect with issues of representation and various film funding initiatives that have encouraged new voices but also highlight questions of distribution and exhibition for small films in the construction of national cinemas.