Stanley Kwans' film, "Center Stage" and its representation of feminism

Stanley Kwans' film, Center Stage rewrites the life of Ruan Lingyu and raises questions about the representation of Ruan's on-screen image and of her off-screen persona. Ruan's fragmented stories with historical details and the interaction between film directors and the female image presents the discourse of feminism, in the context of the modern woman (Zhang, 1994, pp.617) and its visual representations and the role of women in public and private domain. Center Stage intersperses the main …

…Women in New Chinese Cinema." East-West Film Journal 2:1 (1987), 32-45. Berenice Reynaud, "New Vision/New Chinas: Video-Art, Documentation, and the Chinese Modernity in Question," in Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg (eds.), Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 229-57. ·         Yingjin Zhang. "Engendering Chinese Filmic Discourse of the 1930s: Configuration of Modern Women in Shanghai in Three Silent Films." Positions 2:3 (Winter 1994), 603-28. ·         Zhang Xudong. Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).