Date: 2 May 2018 (Wednesday)
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 7, Cheng Yu Tung Building, CUHK
Speaker: Prof. Aynne Kokas (University of Virginia)
China is poised to become the largest theatrical box office in the world. From Kung Fu Panda 3 to Furious 8, Hollywood films are being shot in China to appeal to Chinese audiences. In order to circumvent China’s market access controls and tap the world’s largest potential film market, Hollywood studios have begun engaging in a range of collaborative ventures to access audiences in the middle kingdom. Disney opened its first theme park in mainland China? a USD 5.5 billion investment? in 2016. Chinese conglomerates like the Dalian Wanda Group have taken major stakes in foreign studios, spurring both US government efforts to regulate foreign direct investment in Hollywood, and Chinese government concerns about the dilution of Chinese cultural identity. Now the US and China are undergoing a major shift of the terms of the US-China relationship. Regulators are renegotiating the landmark US-China Film Agreement which expired in February 2017 and had formerly secured 34 slots for foreign films in the Chinese theatrical distribution market leading to a period of significant uncertainty. This talk will explore how the growth of China’s media market is transforming Hollywood from the inside out with a rich range of multi-media clips of recent films from China and the United States.
About Speaker
Anne Kokas is Assistant Professor of Media Studies in University of Virginia. She writes about Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. Her book Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017) focuses on film and media collaboration between China and Hollywood. The project was based on field work supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Shanghai Institute of International Studies. She is always interested in discussing ways that she can contribute her expertise on Sino-U.S. media and technology relations for either industry or academic projects.
Conducted in English. All are welcome.
Kindly register by 30 April 2018.