Questions of Chinese Aesthetics: Film Form and Narrative Space in the Cinema of King Hu

Abstract

This essay addresses the representation of Chineseness in the films of King Hu, a director based in Hong Kong and Taiwan whose cinema draws on themes and norms derived from Chinese painting, theater, and literature. Critical discussions of his work have often addressed the question of the ability of the cinema, a foreign medium rooted in a mechanical age, to express the salient traits of China's longstanding artistic traditions. At stake is the relationship between film form and the national culture, embodied in the concept of a Chinese aesthetic. Film scholars tend to define the main features of Chinese aesthetics selec-