Editorial Team

General Editors

Sabrina Qiong Yu is Professor of Film and Chinese Studies at Newcastle University, UK. Her research and publications focus on Chinese independent cinema, stardom and performance, gender and sexuality, and audience/reception studies. She is the author of Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom (2012&2015) and the editor, with Guy Austin, of Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods (2017&2018). She is leading a four-year project (2019-2023) on Chinese independent cinema as Principal Investigator, funded by UK Arts & Humanities Research Council. She regularly curates Chinese indie film events and is committed to promoting Chinese independent cinema in the UK.

Luke Robison is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. He is the author of Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street (2013), and the editor, with Chris Berry, of Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (2017). His writing on Chinese-language feature film, animation, documentary, and film festivals has appeared in many books and journals. He is also Co-investigator of AHRC-funded project on Chinese independent cinema (2019-2023).

Associate Editors

Hongwei Bao is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he also directs the Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies. His research primarily focuses on queer cultures in contemporary China, including queer films, filmmakers, and film festivals. He is the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (NIAS Press, 2018) and Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020).

Fan Xiang is Associate Lecturer at University of the Arts London. She received her PhD in media communications and cultural studies from Goldsmiths University of London and her research focuses on Chinese independent cinema, art cinema, women’s cinema, film festivals and exhibition. She is the dossier editor of ‘Cinema and Piracy’ in Senses of Cinema. Her monography Producing Art Cinema Culture in China is forthcoming in 2023 as part of the Bloomsbury’s ‘Global East Asian Screen Cultures’ book series, which addresses the relationship between independent and art cinema as well as independent exhibitions after the Film Law. The subjects she teaches include film theory and politics in audiovisual media.

Li Tiecheng is a lecturer and filmmaker at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include Chinese and international independent film studies, documentary studies and film education. In 2014, he obtained a grant from the Sumitomo Foundation to research the influence of Ogawa Shinsuke on the development of independent documentary in China and Hong Kong, and in 2016 he obtained a grant from CUHK for the project “Rebuilding Historical Narrative in Chinese Independent Documentary Filmmaking.” His documentaries My Film (2010) and Brother Wah (2013) were screened in the 15th IFVA and the 6th Chinese Documentary Festival respectively.

Li Xiaofeng is Professor at the College of Arts & Media in Tongji University, Shanghai, a documentary filmmaker and a poet. His documentaries include Ballad of Roaming Spirits (2019), The Shoe Shiner’s Journey (2016), Gold Underground (2011), My Last Secret (2008), Pedaling Father (2007), Walk in the Dark (2005), and Spring Gong (2001). His publications include Direct Cinema as a Filing Method (Tongji University Press 2012), Documentary Filmmaking (co-authored with Jia Kai, China International Broadcasting Press 2017), and a collection of poems Fierce Floods and Savage Beasts in the Dream (2015).

Ma Ran is Associate professor at Nagoya University, Japan. Her research interests include East Asian independent cinemas and film festival studies. She is currently working on the subjective filmmaking in postwar Japan. Ma is the author of Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2019). Besides research, she is also a film critic and reporter, and has organised screening events of Asian independent cinema at Osaka, Beijing, and Nagoya.

JP Sniadecki is an anthropologist-filmmaker whose work includes El Mar La Mar (2017), The Iron Ministry (2014), Yumen (2013), People’s Park (2012), Foreign Parts (2010), and Demolition (2008). In collaboration with Zhu Rikun, he runs a 16mm film workshop in Songzhuang, Beijing, China. He is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and and Professor of Documentary Media at Northwestern University, USA.

Wang Xiaolu is Senior Researcher at China Film Archive, Beijing, and a film critic and curator. He obtained his PhD from Beijing Film Academy and his research focuses on documentary films and the history of Chinese cinema. He has published three books including Film and the Disease of Our Time: Witnessing Independent Film Culture (2008), The Politics of the Cinema (2014) and The Will of the Cinema (2019). He is also a columnist for The Economic Observer and Southern Weekly.

Yang Yishu is Professor at Shanghai Film Academy in Shanghai University, China. She taught at Nanjing University between 2007 and 2019. She started filmmaking in 2002 and her main works include two documentaries Who is Haoran? (2006) and On the Road (2010), and two fictional films One Summer (2014) and Lush Reeds (2018). She has published the monography Film Within Film: Study of Meta-Film (2012), and her research focuses on cultural studies, film studies and gender studies.

Zhang Zanbo is an independent filmmaker and writer. His documentary films include Falling from the Sky (2009), A Song of Love, Maybe (2010), The Interceptor from My Hometown (2011) and The Road (2015). He has published non-fiction book The Road: Low-speed Life in High-speed China (2014, 2015) in Taiwan and China.