Luke Robinson

Contact

• workRoom B68 Trent Building
• work0115 8467465
• luke.robinson@nottingham.ac.uk

Teaching Summary

I teach a variety of first and second year core courses, including a course on Transnational Film and Television and another on Film History to 1945, and third year options (including one on… read more

Research Summary

My current research concerns contemporary documentary film in the PRC. In particular, I am interested in the development and refinement of location shooting practice (xianchang) among directors… read more

Selected Publications

• ROBINSON, L., 2011. Animating the Chinese Child Consumer: Remaking 'Sparkling Red Star' for the Market Journal of Children and Media. 5(4), 426-441
• ROBINSON, L., 2010. From 'Public' to 'Private': Chinese Documentary and the Logic of Xianchang. In: BERRY, C, LU, X and ROFEL, L., eds., The New Chinese Documentary Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 177-194
• ROBINSON, L., 2010. Review of Berry, C. and Y. Zhu (eds.), "TV China". Global Media and Communications. 6(1), 111-114

• View all publications

I teach a variety of first and second year core courses, including a course on Transnational Film and Television and another on Film History to 1945, and third year options (including one on documentary film and media). I am currently supervising PhDs and MRes dissertations on topics ranging from The Muppets as a franchise to the Cultural Revolution and its memorialisation in Chinese media culture. I am particularly interested in supervising potential topics on Sinophone film, media and cultural studies; transnational media in its various manifestations; and non-fiction.

Current Research

My current research concerns contemporary documentary film in the PRC. In particular, I am interested in the development and refinement of location shooting practice (xianchang) among directors working outside the state media system. Although live shooting posed a series of problems for film-makers, my major interest is the question of contingency: how this was incorporated into shooting practice in the form of the 'unexpected event'; and how this was then mediated through different formal techniques, to different ends. Not only does this question provide interesting parallels with the emergence of early actuality film, observational cinema, and cinéma vérité, but it also raises interesting questions about the nature of China's post-socialist transition, and the role that documentary media plays in this process.

I am a member of the Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies Executive Committee, founded in March 2012.

Past Research

Sinophone cinemas; the work of Wong Kar-wai.

• ROBINSON, L., 2012. Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street. Palgrave Macmillan. (In Press.)
• ROBINSON, L., 2011. Animating the Chinese Child Consumer: Remaking 'Sparkling Red Star' for the Market Journal of Children and Media. 5(4), 426-441
• ROBINSON, L., 2010. From 'Public' to 'Private': Chinese Documentary and the Logic of Xianchang. In: BERRY, C, LU, X and ROFEL, L., eds., The New Chinese Documentary Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 177-194
• ROBINSON, L., 2010. Review of Berry, C. and Y. Zhu (eds.), "TV China". Global Media and Communications. 6(1), 111-114
• ROBINSON, L., 2007. Contingency and event in China's new documentary film movement University of Nottingham Eprints. Available at: <http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/546/>
• ROBINSON, L., 2006. Wong Kar-wai's Sensuous Histories. In: LATHAM, K, THOMPSON, S. and KLEIN, J., eds., Consuming China: Approaches to cultural change in contemporary China London: Routledge Curzon. 190-207