EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 5 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 65 too little systematic inquiry into the exact nature and formation of this 'classical' tradition as expressed in Kunqu. It has been argued that a process of ‘fixing’ occurred in Kunqu choreography during the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns (1735–1820). This paper contends that these analyses (aside from being unsupported by the sources and often contradicted by actual contemporary practice) obscure the process by which actors compete to sculpt a performance drawing on a combination of markers demonstrating both their lineage and personal interventions. To support this argument, I apply microlevel analysis to audiovisual materials of choreographic routines for specific scenes, showing how they diverge from each other despite the official insistence on immutable tradition. Mitkina Evgenia (Saint Petersburg State University) MicromoviesWeidianying ( 微电影 ) Key words: Chinese movies, chinese cinema, micromovies, weidianying, short films Short movies were one of the originators of the development of the film industry, the early films rarely exceeded half an hour. This is a very complicated genre in which the director needs to convey the main idea and to captivate an audience during limited screen time. With time short movies gave the palm to full-length film, although many famous filmmakers started their careers with small duration movies (Emir Kusturica, Pedro Almodovar, Takeshi Kitano, G.Danelia, L.Gaidai.). Short films, however, have not disappeared and continue to gain the hearts of the audience. In China, this genre has gained popularity since 2006 due to the development of the Internet. It is from this time films of short format began to appear, firstly called the Internet-videos or Videoclips, but with time they were able to compete with full-length films, and then the genre got its present name weidianying (micromovie). Weidianying has got several features: 1) short duration (8–15 minutes); 2) fast process of shooting (1–7 days, (and)in rare cases — several weeks); 3) minimum cost (from a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars); 4) the ability to be both an independent movie and a TV series; 5) dynamism, and 6) intensity of the plot; 7) the possibility of distribution over the Internet; 8) the possibility of viewing through apps on mobile phones in their spare time. Weidianying filmtypes: 1) humor, “trolling”; 2) youth love stories; 3) character training, encouragement and struggle; 4) the story in the old style; 5) touching stories about relatives; 6) landscape pictures, which give aesthetic pleasure; 7) the story with strong moral element. The weidianying micromovie genre found in China its new life due to the Internet, because the devel- opment of technology, the accelerated rhythm of life, SMS-culture and MTV-culture dictate the choice of this dynamic genre. Stenberg Josh (University of British Columbia) Programming Tradition: Repertoire Selection and Transmission at the Lantern Festival Key words: xiqu economics; xiqu sociology; festival programming; liyuan; Minnan culture Xiqu is often identified as a “traditional” form of art, meaning that contemporary performance draws heavily on practices of the Chinese stage predating contact with Western theatre. What specifically con- stitutes that tradition varies radically from genre to genre, troupe to troupe, region to region, and per- formance to performance. Theatres, critics, and fans alike identify the principal responsibility of theatre practitioners as the safeguarding of an embodied capital. One way of catching hold of the slippery idea of ‘tradition’ is to examine the relationship between repertoire and technique. Specifically, how do repertoire and technique constitute one another? This article addresses the question of how tradition and creativity are practiced and negotiated in xiqu through a case study: the Lantern Festival in Quanzhou, a coastal city in southern Fujian. The performance genre in question is liyuan, a stage genre that claims descent from nanxi (southern drama). This article argues that xiqu performance is generated from the consensus attrib-