Explores the relationship between cinema and the cities of Western China.

Exploring the stories, memories and experiences attached to places, Western China on Screen is the first monograph to explore the affinity between the cinema and cities of western China through a spatial perspective. Hongyan Zou investigates how cinematic cities in western China appear as both spaces of national power and enclosed spaces of traditional cultural values, and the book diversifies the glamourised image of the post-socialist, technocratic metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai - breaking the long-existing rural and ethnographical images of western China established by Chinese Fifth Generation directors. Through case studies of films such as Rain Clouds Over Wushan (1996), Buddha Mountain (2010) and Weaving Girl (2010), this book establishes a new way of looking at western urban China on screen: from a space of production to a space of increasing consumption. Hongyan Zou is a lecturer at the Foreign Language School of Sichuan University, China.