The Look, the Leer, the Glare, the Glance and the Gaze: Women Filmmakers and Twenty-First Century China

This research seminar explores how women filmmakers depict gender and sexuality on Chinese screens in the twenty-first century.

Please note this event will be held online via Zoom. To request a link to this event, please email mediaresearchsupport@leeds.ac.uk by 12pm on Wednesday 07 October.

The impact of the #MeToo movement on women involved in Chinese screen culture highlights the urgency of a critical investigation into the gendered nature of the visual politics of transnational China.  This presentation considers the ways in which women filmmakers depict gender and sexuality on Chinese screens in the twenty-first century by refining the concept of the “male gaze” to include the look, the leer, the glare, and the glance as well as intersectional, oppositional, alienated, queer and other critical “gazes.”  Covering a range of motion pictures by women, the impact of economic, technological, social, political, and cultural changes on women’s lives in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and throughout the Chinese diaspora comes into focus.

Gina Marchetti teaches courses in film, gender and sexuality, critical theory and cultural studies at the University of Hong Kong.  She is the author of Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley:  University of California, 1993), From Tian’anmen to Times Square:  Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens  (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 2006), and The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens:  Race, Sex, and Cinema (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 2012), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s INFERNAL AFFAIRS—The Trilogy (Hong Kong:  Hong Kong University Press, 2007), and Citing China:  Politics, Postmodernism, and World Cinema (Hawai’i, 2018), among other publications.  

Visit the website for more information about Gina’s work on Hong Kong women filmmakers since 1997. 

Register for her Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Hong Kong cinema.

Twitter handle: @marchetti_gina