Intellect

Authors:  Kwai-Cheung Lo 
DOI: 10.1386/jcc.3.3.231/1

Keywords
Tian Zhuangzhuang, ethnic-minority film, post-Cultural Revolution, Delamu, capitalist modernity

Abstract
This article discusses how the Han film-maker Tian Zhuangzhuang represents China's ethnic minorities in his feature-films Liechang zasa/On the Hunting Ground (1985), Daoma zei/The Horse Thief (1986), and documentary video Chamagudao: Delamu/Delamu (2004). Separated by a period of two decades, that bears witness to the drastic changes in China, Tian's productions designate two significant moments to depicting ethnic minorities in the history of Chinese cinema. The first is dated back to the period after the Cultural Revolution when a new generation of Chinese film-makers were seeking the marginalized cultural other as a contrasting mirror. Two decades later, under the prevailing marketization trends of the Chinese film industry, his documentary Delamu endeavours to overcome the division between Han and non-Han. These two moments of ethnic representation are not only of Tian's own film-making career but they also symbolize the important dialectical instants of continuity and rupture, in the ways in which ethnic minorities are portrayed on the Chinese screen.