Issue 8: Female Practitioners, Gendered Labour, and Independent Production
This issue of Chinese Independent Cinema Observer seeks to explore the diverse and multifaceted roles of women practitioners within the landscape of independent video-making. Over the past three decades, independent video practices have emerged as significant forces across Chinese-language screen cultures, spanning mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and diasporic communities. These practices, encompassing non-fiction, fiction, experimental, and hybrid forms, have expanded the possibilities of visual storytelling and challenged conventional power structures in both artistic and industrial contexts. Yet, despite their vital contributions, women practitioners—including directors, cinematographers, producers, curators, editors, and other creative labourers—have often remained on the margins of dominant industry narratives.
In recent years, global feminist movements and the growing momentum of gender consciousness have prompted a re-evaluation of women’s roles in creative industries. This issue aims to illuminate women’s authorship, agency, and labour in the independent video-making space, recognising their creative contributions as well as the structural challenges they navigate. By foregrounding the lived experiences, artistic practices, and industrial positions of women, we hope to construct a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of gendered labour within the independent video-making field.
We invite submissions that examine these themes from a variety of perspectives, using academic essays, critical reflections, practitioner interviews, and director’s notes.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Authorship, Gender, and Narrative
- Notions of multiple authorship in artistic practices
- Gender identity and expression beyond traditional framework
- Narratives in power relations and innovations in storytelling
- Gendered Labor and Resistance
- Disparities and progress in women’s workplace
- Intersectionality in cinema
- Women’s resistance and alternative strategies within industry networks
- Herstory, Memory, and Representation
- Activism and social movements
- Memory and documentation
- Ecofeminism within environmental awareness
- Curatorial and Archival Practices
- Curation, museums, and film festivals
- Archival practices
- Cultural intermediaries in transnational and cross-cultural communication
- Technology, Ethics, and New Media
- Social media and everyday documentation in digital media
- Documentary ethics
- Technological innovation and changes
About Chinese Independent Cinema Observer:
Chinese Independent Cinema Observer (CICO) is as an open-access, bi-lingual e-journal published on the Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA) website and is indexed in the Modern Language Association International Bibliography (MLA) database. Rigid academic publication rules not only limit young scholars’ opportunities to share their insights but also marginalise practitioners, reducing them to mere ‘research subjects’. Furthermore, language barriers and differing academic systems often hinder the exchange of ideas and mutual learning among academic communities. This journal is dedicated to breaking these boundaries by providing a freer, rule-defying space for expression and exchange. We aim to bring bold voices and innovative ideas to the forefront, giving practitioners the opportunity to speak for themselves while also engaging with the analyses about them. At the same time, we strive to empower emerging scholars from diverse cultures by showcasing their work to a broader audience.
To further foster diverse participation and collaborative curation, starting from Issue 7, CICO invites aspiring young scholars and PhD candidates to join its editorial team. We warmly welcome proposals for future thematic issues and are committed to supporting individuals or editorial teams in developing ideas and editing journal issues, jointly expanding the scope of inquiry. Proposals should follow the format of the journal’s previous calls for papers and be submitted to the official CIFA email: cifacontact@gmail.com.
Formats:
Submissions can take various forms, including but not restricted to filmmaker interviews, director notes, critical reflections, and academic essays. We encourage contributors to explore their unique creative and intellectual styles. For reference, please consult previous issues of the journal for a sense of the diverse range of content we publish. As a bilingual publication, Chinese Independent Cinema Observer accepts submissions in both Chinese and English. Our editorial team will ensure translations between the two languages.
Style guide:
Please refer to the Chinese Independent Film Archive website for journal style guides and past issues: https://www.chinaindiefilm.org/publications/chinese-independent-cinema-observer/
Words suggestion:
There is no strict word limit, as clarity of expression and completeness of argument take precedence. We warmly welcome well-structured, high-quality submissions, including longer articles where justified.
In general, the recommended word count for academic articles is no more than 8,000 words in English and 12,000 words in Chinese.
Submission and questions:
This issue is scheduled to launch in March 2026. To ensure adequate time for bilingual editing and formatting, please submit your full articles by 30 October, 2025. If you have any questions or suggestions about this special issue, please contact the issue editors.
Submissions should be emailed directly to the issue’s executive editors.
Mirror Yijingzi Huang (PhD candidate at Monash University, Australia), yijingzi.huang@monash.edu
Yolie Xinran Liu (PhD candidate at City University of Hong Kong), xinraliu4-c@my.cityu.edu.hk
CIFA, cifacontact@gmail.com
Issue 7: Media Archaeology and Obsolescence
In the past 30 or so years, Chinese independent cinema has existed across multiple mediums, from celluloid to video cassettes like VHS and DV, then to digital formats today. Filmmakers and curators have witnessed the change of cameras from analog to digital, and experienced the democratization of filmmaking tools and the proliferation of independently-made images. While there is a plethora of scholarship on the history and content of Chinese independent cinema, little concerns the production, preservation, and the afterlives of these materials. To fill in this gap, this issue encourages the contributors to think about the history of the tools as an essential part of the history of the works in Chinese independent cinema. In other words, we want to think about obsolescence as something redeemable, something useful even though it is sidelined in history. Building on this topic, this issue of Chinese Independent Cinema Observer invites scholars, filmmakers, curators, and archivists to think about Chinese-language independent moving image practices through the lens of media archaeology, obsolescence, and technologies.
In the increasing number of scholarships on the topics of media archaeology and material culture, the word “obsolescence” has resurfaced as a lesser-explored yet generative concept. Characterized by opposing tendencies of “persistence” and “suppression”—where the material remains after the format is outdated and the new is often thought to overpower the old—the dynamics of obsolescence directs our attention to these clashing temporal energies in various media cultures, especially how film technologies, materials, spaces, and ideas are reappearing and even resisting to become obsolete. How can we salvage those that are no longer useful or no longer exist in Chinese independent cinema? What is the relationship between the residuals found through media archaeology and the culture that generates them? With these questions in mind, this issue welcomes submissions from a variety of fields and disciplines, and encourages interdisciplinary approaches to the provocation of media archaeology and obsolescence in Chinese independent cinema. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Media archaeology in Chinese independent cinema
- Material and conceptual obsolescence
- History and culture of independent filmmaking technologies
- Generations of film cameras and formats
- Analog and digital materials
- The lives and afterlives of film prints and DV tapes
- Coming of the digital age
- Filmmaking experience with analog and digital tools
- Challenges of retiring older gauges and formats
- Digitization of analog materials
- Small gauge film formats like 8mm and 16mm
- Other format like DV, magnetic tapes, and smart devices
- Archiving and curating independent cinema
- Restoration and preservation
- Storage of materials
- Personal archives of independent films
- Independent archives and exhibitions
- Memory and material studies
- Case study of filmmaker’s production experience
Formats:
We welcome contributions in the following formats:
- Scholarly article (no more than 8000 words in English; 12000 in Chinese)
- Film, exhibition and festival review (no word limit)
- Director’s and curator’s notes and interviews (no word limit )
Submission:
Chinese Independent Cinema Observer is a bilingual international journal. We welcome Chinese and/or English language submissions. Please submit your articles to the executive editor of this issue by Email (Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang lz1482@nyu.edu) before February 28th, 2025.
Style guide:
Please refer to the Chinese Independent Film Archive website for journal style guides and past issues: https://www.chinaindiefilm.org/publications/chinese-independent-cinema-observer/
Anticipated publishing date:
Chinese Independent Cinema Observer is as an open-access e-journal published on the Chinese Independent Film Archive website and is included in the Modern Language Association International Bibliography (MLA) database. This issue is expected to come out in June 2025.
Questions:
If you have any questions or suggestions about this special issue, please contact the issue editor Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang at lz1482@nyu.edu.