Digital technologies have transformed moving image culture in China by giving rise to individual filmmakers and viewers. This phenomenon is called "cinema of dispersion" or China's "iGeneration cinema". It is characterized by: 1) Individual, non-industry filmmakers and self-directed viewers creating and sharing content online. 2) New forms of online streaming and mobile viewing replacing traditional distribution channels. 3) An emphasis on individual expression, self-reflection, and "relying on oneself" through the use of digital and social media for amateur production and personalized online viewing experiences.

1. China’s
iGeneration
cinema
or cinema of
disperson
Dr Tianqi (Kiki ) Yu
Tianqi.yu@nottingham.edu.cn

2. How digital technoligies have transformed the moving image
culture in the context of China’s increasingly individualising,
consumption-oriented, urban, and technologically mutable
‘post-WTO’ society.
Cinema of dispersion:
Individual, non-industry, amateur filmmakers, and self-directed
viewers,
New forms of distribution channels, online streaming and mobile
viewing.

3. The ‘i’ in iGeneration
An emphasis on ‘individual’, ‘individualisation’, an
increasing concern with individual self-expression and self
realisation, self reflection and self understanding, as well
as ‘relying on oneself’ – solipsistic or/and political
The use of information technology. Digital and social
media have given rise to a post-cinemaic culture of amateur
production, and online viewing experience on personalised
screen. Shared, and collectively groups

4. “Digital technologies, together with neoliberal economic
relations, have given birth to radically new ways of
manufacturing and articulating lived experienced”
Steven Shaviro, “post-cinematic affect: on Grace Jones, Boarding
Gate and Southland Tales” Film Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

5. Ai Xiaoming’s documentary Our Children
(2009) based on the found footage taken by
parents who lose their children during the
2008 Sichuan earthquake
Ai Weiwei’s Lao Ma Ti Hua (2009) produced
through collective effort and the circulation of
the film through social media as a continuation
of their activism.
First person DV documentaries by a group of
women, for self understanding and a new way
of communication, or a communicative
practice, to negotiate their position as
daughters in the family, and women in the
largely male dominated film world, and society
at large.
Expose-style documentaries
Ai Weiwei’s autobiographic photo in ‘Lao Ma Ti
Hua’ (2009)

6. How about the distribution and the viewing spaces?
How does the networked screen change the nature of
exhibition space?
How is it different from post-cinematic culture elsewhere
in the world?