British Chinese Cinema on the Cultural Margins: Reflections on the Field
Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies, University of Nottingham
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Between 2011 and 2018, the authors co-wrote a number of papers on British Chinese cinema, loosely referring to films made by British-born Chinese filmmakers or Chinese films made in Britain. These papers focused on several key feature films made in the 1980s and 90s, as well as a number of short films. At the core of these has been an exploration of how British Chinese representation struggled for recognition, even on the margins of the wider film cultures and discourse in Britain. Ten years on, some of the films discussed are now more readily available for viewing (on platforms such as the BFI Player) and the debates that they stimulated can now include new work by emerging filmmakers. As discussions of British Chinese identities expand into conversations about wider British East/Southeast Asian identities, we reflect on the degree to which the space for such representations have opened up (or not), particularly within film distribution and exhibition networks in the UK, and on what cultural interventions continue to be needed in the future.
