Editorial Team

General Editors

Sabrina Qiong Yu is Professor of Film and Chinese Studies at Newcastle University, UK. Her research and publications focus on Chinese independent cinema, stardom and fandom, and film censorship. She is the author of Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom (2012&2015) and the co-editor of Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods (2017&2018) and Chinese Independent Cinema: Past, Present and a Questionable Future (2025). She is the Principal Investigator of the project on Chinese independent cinema (2019-2024) , funded by UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, and the project on Hong Kong Independent cinema (2025-6), funded by British Film Institute. She has been actively curating academic events, journal publications, film festivals, screenings and exhibitions relate to Chinese independent cinema, and is dedicated to advancing both its research and global circulation.

Luke Robison is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. He is the author of Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street (2013), and the co-editor of Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (2017) and Chinese Independent Cinema: Past, Present and a Questionable Future (2025). His writing on Chinese-language feature film, animation, documentary, and film festivals has appeared in many books and journals. He is also Co-investigator of AHRC-funded project on Chinese independent cinema (2019-2024).

Executive Editors

Issue 1: Ma Ran, Akiyama Tamako

Issue 2: Sabrina Qiong Yu, Wang Xiaolu

Issue 3: Flora Lichaa, Yang Yishu

Issue 4: Li Xiaofeng, J.P. Sniadecki

Issue 5: Wang Xiaolu

Issue 6: Zhang Zanbo, Sabrina Qiong Yu

Issue 7: Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang

Issue 8: Mirror Yijingzi Huang, Yolie Xinran Liu

Issue 9: Jenny Man Wu, Andy Ke Zhu, Hongwei Bao

Issue 10: Jing Li

Advisory Board

Hongwei Bao is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he also directs the Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies. His research primarily focuses on queer cultures in contemporary China, including queer films, filmmakers, and film festivals. He is the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (NIAS Press, 2018) and Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020).

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export Corporation in Beijing, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese-language cinemas and other Chinese-language screen-based media, as well as work from neighboring countries. He is especially interested in queer screen cultures in East Asia; mediatized public space in East Asian cities; and national and transnational screen cultures in East Asia. The books he authors or co-edited include Chinese Independent Cinema: Past, Present, and a Questionable Future (2025), Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (2017), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement (2010) and China on Screen: Cinema and Nation (2006).

Cong Feng (b. 1972, Chengde, Hebei Province) is a filmmaker, writer, and photographer. He serves on the editorial board of Film Auteur. His published poetry collections include There Is a Train I Cannot See, An Elegant and Popular Literary Work, Thank You I Think So Too, and The So-Called History. His major cinematic works include Doctor Ma’s Country Clinic, The Unfinished History of Life, Stratum 1: The Visitors, Rooms with Mao’s Images, Stratum 2: The Asthenosphere, What Is A Film: Stratum 2 Critique, and Another Part of This World: Ghosts and Their Echoes. Cong’s films have been showcased at numerous international and regional film festivals and exhibitions, including, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Seoul Digital Film Festival, the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Chinese Documentary Festival (Visible Record), the Vienna International Film Festival, the Taipei Biennial of Documentary Film, and the South Taiwan Film Festival. His work has received several honors, such as the NETPAC Award at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival (Forum Section), the Directors’ Guild of Japan Award at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, and the Bronze Prize at Yunfest. His photography has been exhibited in the “New Chinese Photography” section of the 2002 Pingyao International Photography Festival. He has also participated in the 5+1: One Ring More Than the Fifth Ring Road project and the Hunger Geography group exhibition at Taikang Space. In 2020, he held a solo exhibition at Lanzhou Gucang Contemporary Art Museum entitled We Have Never Been Modern, which featured films, video works, and photographic pieces.

Li Tiecheng is a filmmaker and Senior Lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include Chinese and international independent film studies, documentary studies and film education. In 2014, he obtained a grant from the Sumitomo Foundation to research the influence of Ogawa Shinsuke on the development of independent documentary in China and Hong Kong, and in 2016 he obtained a grant from CUHK for the project “Rebuilding Historical Narrative in Chinese Independent Documentary Filmmaking.” His documentaries My Film (2010) and Brother Wah (2013) were screened in the 15th IFVA and the 6th Chinese Documentary Festival respectively.

Li Xiaofeng is Professor at the College of Arts & Media in Tongji University, Shanghai, a documentary filmmaker and a poet. His documentaries include Ballad of Roaming Spirits (2019), The Shoe Shiner’s Journey (2016), Gold Underground (2011), My Last Secret (2008), Pedaling Father (2007), Walk in the Dark (2005), and Spring Gong (2001). His publications include Direct Cinema as a Filing Method (Tongji University Press 2012), Documentary Filmmaking (co-authored with Jia Kai, China International Broadcasting Press 2017), and a collection of poems Fierce Floods and Savage Beasts in the Dream (2015).

Ma Ran is Associate professor at Nagoya University, Japan. Her research interests include East Asian independent cinemas and film festival studies. She is currently working on the subjective filmmaking in postwar Japan. Ma is the author of Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2019). Besides research, she is also a film critic and reporter, and has organised screening events of Asian independent cinema at Osaka, Beijing, and Nagoya.

Ying Qian is an associate professor of Chinese cinema and media at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. she is a film historian and media theorist, and her first book, Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia University Press, 2024) has been honored with the 2025 Lionel Trilling Book Award, and the 2024 best book in journalism history award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Qian’s articles have appeared in Positions: Asia Critique, Critical Inquiry, New Left Review, China Perspectives, New Literary History of Modern China, Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, and other journals. At Columbia, she teaches classes on East Asiancinema, Chinese media cultures, documentary media, media of science and technology, and comparative media theory and history. 

JP Sniadecki is an anthropologist-filmmaker whose work includes El Mar La Mar (2017), The Iron Ministry (2014), Yumen (2013), People’s Park (2012), Foreign Parts (2010), and Demolition (2008). In collaboration with Zhu Rikun, he runs a 16mm film workshop in Songzhuang, Beijing, China. He is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and and Professor of Documentary Media at Northwestern University, USA.

Wang Xiaolu is Senior Researcher at China Film Archive, Beijing, and a film critic and curator. He obtained his PhD from Beijing Film Academy and his research focuses on documentary films and the history of Chinese cinema. He has published three books including Film and the Disease of Our Time: Witnessing Independent Film Culture (2008), The Politics of the Cinema (2014) and The Will of the Cinema (2019). He is also a columnist for The Economic Observer and Southern Weekly.

Yang Yishu is Professor at Tongji University, China. She taught at Nanjing University and Shanghai University before joining Shanghai Jiaotong University. She started filmmaking in 2002 and her main works include two documentaries Who is Haoran? (2006) and On the Road (2010), and two fictional films One Summer (2014) and Lush Reeds (2018). She has published the monography Film Within Film: Study of Meta-Film (2012), and her research focuses on cultural studies, film studies and gender studies.