“This theoretically sophisticated and painstakingly researched monograph is a welcome addition to the fields of Chinese film studies and urban history. Braester’s book is of tremendous research value and is highly recommended for scholars and students interested in Chinese urbanization and urban-themed films and stage plays.” - Zhuoyi Wang, China Review International This groundbreaking work is an important contribution to a particularly appropriate and productive methodological turn. “Moving much beyond the conventional approach that focuses only on textual close readings, Painting the City Red offers fresh, fascinating, comprehensive, and sophisticated analyses of films and stage plays as discursive products of power relations among a broad range of players involved in the urban transformation. Olivia Khoo, Media International Australia “In Painting the City Red, Yomi Braester provides a fascinating and unique account of how cinema and theatre have contributed to the changing ways in which the city is imagined and conceptualised in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.” It is a remarkable accomplishment.” - Wendy Larson, MLQ “This is an impressive study that demands slow reading and offers many opportunities to contemplate how film and drama work and how the city comes into being. The questions that Painting the City Red provokes are nearly as exciting as the conclusions it draws.” - Madeleine Wilcox, Books and Ideas “A sweeping and innovative survey of urban representation that.rightfully reshapes the conceptual map of modern Chinese culture. “.he attention to official/popular productions throughout is a much-needed addition to current scholarship.” - Joshua Neves, Reviews in Cultural Theory In Painting the City Red, Braester reveals the role that film and theater have played in mediating state power, cultural norms, and the struggle for civil society in Chinese cities. He shows how the cinematic rewriting of historical narratives has accompanied the spatial reorganization of specific urban sites, including Nanjing Road in Shanghai veterans’ villages in Taipei and Tiananmen Square, centuries-old courtyards, and postmodern architectural landmarks in Beijing. Rather than simply reflect urban culture, movies and stage dramas have facilitated the development of new perceptions of space and time, representing the future city variously as an ideal socialist city, a metropolis integrated into the global economy, and a site for preserving cultural heritage.ĭrawing on extensive archival research, interviews with leading filmmakers and urban planners, and close readings of scripts and images, Braester describes how films and stage plays have promoted and opposed official urban plans and policies as they have addressed issues such as demolition-and-relocation plans, the preservation of vernacular architecture, and the global real estate market. Yomi Braester argues that the transformation of Chinese cities in recent decades is a result not only of China’s abandonment of Maoist economic planning in favor of capitalist globalization but also of a shift in visual practices. Painting the City Red illuminates the dynamic relationship between the visual media, particularly film and theater, and the planning and development of cities in China and Taiwan, from the emergence of the People’s Republic in 1949 to the staging of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
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