Berry, Chris 1959-

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Berry, Chris 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of California, Berkeley, former associate professor of film studies; La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, former lecturer in film; Goldsmith's College, University of London, London, England, currently professor of film and television studies and codirector of media research program.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Perspectives on Chinese Cinema, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), 1985, 2nd expanded edition, BFI (London, England), 1991.

A Bit on the Side: East-West Topographies of Desire, EmPress (Sidney, Australia), 1994.

(Translator) Ni Zhen, Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China's Fifth Generation, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2002.

(Editor, with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue) Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2003.

(Editor) Chinese Films in Focus: Twenty-five New Takes, British Film Institute (London, England), 2003.

(Editor, with Feii Lu) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After, Hong Kong University Press (Hong Kong, China), 2005.

(With Mary Farquhar) China on Screen: Cinema and Nation, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade, edited by Andrew Grossman, Harrington Park Press (New York, NY), 2000; The Korean Blockbuster: Atlantis and America, edited by Julian Stringer, Hyonshil Munhwa Younggu (Seoul, South Korea), 2001; Let's Love Hong Kong: Script and Essays, by Yau Ching, Youth Literary Review Books (Hong Kong), 2002; Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000), edited by Wu Hung with Wang Huangshent and Feng Boyi, Chaungdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, China), 2002; The Cinema of Japan and Korea, edited by Justin Boyer, Wallflower Press (London, England), 2004; New Korean Cinema, edited by Julian Stringer and Chi-Yung Shin, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 2005; and Ombre Elettriche: Cento Anni de Cinema Chinese (1905-2005), edited by Marco Müller and Elena Pollacchi, Electa (Venice, Italy), 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including Historiography East & West, Dianying Xinshang, Positions, Inter-Asia, Australian Journal of Anthropology, and the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese.

SIDELIGHTS:

Chris Berry is an academic whose work focuses on Chinese media and communications. Among his research interests regarding Chinese media are film and television, independent video documentaries, and new media and computer-based communication. Berry's research also extends beyond Chinese subjects into Korean cinema and Asian cinema by homosexual filmmakers.

Berry has served as editor or coeditor on a number of scholarly collections addressing Asian cinema. For example, in Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, edited with Fran Martin and Audrey Yue, Berry and his contributors seek to "address the ways in which new media (the Internet, cell phones, 'zines, and such) have facilitated the development of GLBT identities and cultures in Asia," observed Mimi Van Ausdall in the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. The contributors consider issues related to the local use and adoption of global technology; the role of new media in redefining and repositioning local customs; and regional transmission of knowledge and culture across the social and intellectual landscape of Asia. The articles "demonstrate the importance of empirical analysis of GLBT cultures in Asia," noted Van Ausdall, who concluded that "the book has begun the work of sociologically grounded research and provides more than a passing glimpse into gay Asia."

Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After, which Berry edited with Feii Lu, covers topics on the evolution and development of moviemaking in Taiwan since the early 1980s. The book contains twelve essays with analysis of works by filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao Hsien, Tsai Mingliang, Edward Yang, Wang Tung, Chang Tsochi, Wu Nien-jen, and Ang Lee. "The book covers almost all the themes found in Taiwan films since the New Wave—for example, the disharmonies and confrontations between ethnic groups, between political beliefs, between generations, between genders, and between individuals and society," commented Tan Ye in the China Review International. Berry's own essay in the collection, "Where Is the Love? Hyperbolic Realism and Indulgence in Vive L'Amour," demonstrates "his insight in the very choice of the title of his contribution," Tan stated. "For various reasons," Tan concluded, "in the English-speaking world there have been few books on the cinema of Taiwan, and this volume is thus the first real English textbook suitable for Taiwan film classes for a Western audience."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

China Review International, fall, 2005, Tan Ye, review of Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After, p. 367.

Cineaste, summer, 2003, Richard James Havis, review of Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China's Fifth Generation, p. 57.

Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, May-June, 2004, Mimi Van Ausdall, "Asian Nations Set Their Own Gay Course," review of Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia," p. 36.

Library Journal, December, 2002, Rie Sheridan, review of Memories from the Beijing Film Academy, p. 131.

Wisconsin Bookwatch, July, 2006, review of China on Screen: Cinema and Nation.