This book explores female-themed art films from China and Germany and seeks to illustrate how the cultural difference between the ways of representing women and narrating women's themes is shown in both countries' films, by means of analyzing two film elements: mise-en-scène and cinematography. This book analyzes female-themed art films in five topics: Marriage and Love, Birth and Motherhood, Professional Women and Housewives, Death and Despair, and Dreams and Destiny.

In the context of globalization, this book explores female-themed art films from China and Germany, in order to seek and illustrate how the cultural difference between the ways of representing women and narrating women's themes is shown in the films of both countries.

Aiming at understanding gender representation and its transition in different cultural contexts and providing insights into the underlying beliefs and values within each society, this study examined the images of women, especially working/professional women, portrayed in top-grossing feature films from China and the U.S. in the past two decades (from 2000 to 2019). A two-step dual-approach content analysis was designed and conducted to make up for the limitation of the single content analysis method, emphasizing both the descriptive function of quantitative content analysis and the interpretive function of qualitative content analysis. With a 12-question pretested codebook, the quantitative analysis generalized the characteristics of female images in top-grossing films. The following in-depth qualitative analysis delved into the details of specific gender discourses in selected films. Out of the 200 cataloged top-grossing films, 79 leading female characters (43 from Chinese films and 36 from U.S. films) in 78 films (42 Chinese films and 36 U.S. films) were examined in the quantitative analysis section, 9 female protagonists in 9 films (5 Chinese films and 4 U.S. films) were analyzed in the qualitative sections. The findings indicated the complexities of gender representation in this global era. On the one hand, the statistical results revealed homogeneous female images concerning the protagonists’ age, physical attractiveness, relationships, socioeconomic status, sex-role behavior, and personality traits. On the other hand, the in-depth critical discourse analysis indicated the impact of dominant ideologies on gender representation in each society. The representation of female protagonists echoed the social transitions and feminist thought of the past two decades. From the perspective of gender representation, the globalized commercial media and culture industry, which brings conflict and integration between local and foreign cultures, complicates the mediated social and cultural contexts and the gender images presented on media.

Through an interdisciplinary conversation with contributors from social anthropology, religious studies, film studies, literary studies, cultural studies, and history, Crafting Chinese Memories is a novel book which addresses how works of art shape memories, and offers new ways of conceptualising storytelling, memory-making, art, and materiality. It explores the memories of artists, filmmakers, novelists, storytellers, and persons who come to terms with their own histories even as they reveal the social memories of watershed events in modern China.