This is part of Lissa Crane's class, "Anthropology of China." The talk is open to the public. Everybody is welcome. It is generously co-sponsored by Rutgers Global.
Abstract
From Platform (2000) to Mountains May Depart (2015), many of Jia Zhangke’s films are situated within China’s energy transition. Two major changes in China’s energy structure after the reform and opening-up, the privatization of coal mines and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, are portrayed via their impacts on Chinese miners. Miner characters in Jia Zhangke’s films are disenfranchised and disadvantaged people, whose suffering in a post-socialist era brings into light the risk of mining and the exploitation of laborers. This talk explores Jia Zhangke’s films as a visual record of China’ energy development in the 1980s and 1990s. It reflects upon the acute pain and slow violence experienced by the Chinese miners, discussing the validity of cinematic representations in capturing injustice within Chinese fossil fuel regimes.
Bio
Xingming Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Literature Program at Rutgers University. His research interests reside in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, environmental humanities, and energy humanities. His dissertation project focuses on fossil fuel narratives in modern China.