Using my CCS award funding, I have had the privilege of conducting archival research for my dissertation at the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, National Taiwan University Library, Hong Kong Film Archive, Chinese University of Hong Kong Library - Hong Kong Studies Collection, University of Hong Kong Library and the Cui Yongyuan Center for Oral History, Communication University of China (Beijing). In Hong Kong and Taiwan, I was primarily exploring the film industry networks that connected Hong Kong to both the PRC and the ROC in the 1950s and 60s, and how Hong Kong served as an indirect mediary between the two cultural spheres throughout the Cold War. Most significantly, I had the opportunity to learn more about Hong Kong filmmakers who produced films for the Taiwanese market, whose films are often excluded from histories of Taiwanese cinema despite having clearly influenced both the Mandarin-language and Taiyupian film industries. At the Cui Yongyuan Center in Beijing, I was generously granted access to countless hours of raw interview footage of Chinese film industry paragons, such as Xie Jin, Xie Tieli, Shi Shujun, and many others. This semester, I plan to focus my research on Sino-Italian cultural exchange through Italian archives, primarily consulting the Luigi Chiarini library at the national film archive, the Ugo Casiraghi archive at the Biblioteca Statale Isontina di Gorizia, the Curzio Malaparte Archive at the Biblioteca di Via Senato in Milan, the archives at the legacy state broadcaster RAI, and other resources at the National Library in Rome.
- Matteo Cavelier Riccardi
Department of Comparative Literature