Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema by Rey Chow

Published by Columbia University Press in February 1995 / 253 pages / $16.50, paper / $59.50, cloth 1995.

Part One sets out the theoretical basis of the book and brings together a range of Chinese texts with Western postmodernist theory. Basically Chow seeks to answer questions about technology and culture in the so called 'third world'; how the non-Western viewer is for ever imprisoned in the Western gaze articulated by the camera. Part 2 provides insightful readings of a number of 'Fifth Generation films including those of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. Part 3 develops a complex theory of ethnography based on the view that Chinese films constitute a 'novel anthropology'.

Chow not only seeks to ask questions about the films themselves and their place in Chinese culture but also the very nature of Chinese culture. Chow is ideally placed to address these issues. Ethnically Chinese from Hong Kong but Western educated, Chow has the background and command of theory to provide a stimulating analysis of Chinese cinema.