The spatializing consciousness of Chinese cinema

Written in 1983, this article has been considered the magnum opus of the Hong Kong film scholar Lam Nin-tung ( 2--n , 1944-90). For Lam, even though the cinema is technologically and ideologically configured according to the European theory of perspective, Chinese filmmakers have long experimented with spatializing the relationship between the spectator's body and the image by layering views of reality onto a two-dimensional frame. In so doing, Lam sees the cinematographic image-consciousness as a process of mirroring-journeying, a groundbreaking understanding of the cinema that is drawn from aesthetic debates both in China and Europe and offers an intervention that predates and is comparable to film phenomenology and Deleuzian philosophy. In this article, Lam Nin-tung's own notes are provided as numbered side notes, whereas the translators' notes (marked by typographical symbols) are placed at the end of each section. All dates are Common Era unless specified otherwise.