VICTOR FAN 范可樂
Professor of Film and Media Philosophy; Film Festival Consultant; Filmmaker; Composer; and Theater Director
Photo by 攝影師：Jean Wong
Research 學術研究
Monographs 學術書籍
Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).
Extraterritoriality: Locating Hong Kong Cinema and Media (University of Edinburg Press, June 2019).
Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2015); nominated for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award (Moving Image). Translated into Chinese as 《電影接近現實：基於中國電影理論》 Dianying jiejin xianshi: jiyu Zhonguo dianying lilun [Cinema approaching reality: On Chinese film theory], trans. 朱安博 Zhu Anbo (Beijing: 首都經濟貿易大學出版社 Shoudu jingji maoyi daxue chubanshe, 2020).
Articles 學術文章
Peer-Reviewed 同行評審
“Blue Island: Toward a Democratic Sociality through Affective Dissonance,” Journal of Chinese Cinema, forthcoming.
“Jinpa: Embodied Temporalities and Interbeing,” in Radical Embodiment on Film, ed. Louis Bayman (Bloomsbury), forthcoming, chapter 3.
“Decolonisation and Asia as Problematics,” in Global Circulations of Film Theory, eds. Sarah Cooper and Aboubakar Sanogo, forthcoming, chapter 10.
“Borrowed Time: Performance of Failure and Interbeing,” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature 22, no. 1 (March 2025): 179–95; forthcoming.
“Coded by the Cold War: New Sensation Literature and the Cinema,” in Film as World Literature, ed. Robin Truth Goodman (Bloomsbury, 2025), 33–46.
〈相即：反思當今電影哲學〉 “Xiangji: Fansi dangjin dianying zhexue” [“Interbeing: Rethinking Contemporary Film Theory”], 《電影藝術》 Dianying yishu [Film Art], no. 420 (January 2025): 3–10.
“The Spatializing Consciousness of Chinese Cinema,” by Lam Nin-tung, trans. Victor Fan and Siqi Liu, Asian Cinema 35, nos. 1–2 (April 2024): 99–138.
"Theorising Queen Cinema," Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality, eds. Hongwei Bao and Jamie J. Zhao (Routledge, 2024), 194–205.
“Poetics of Double Erasure: British East/South-East Asian Cinema and Lilting,” in Global London on Screen, ed. Keith Wagner and Roland François Lack (Manchester University Press, 2023), chapter 9.
“Toward a Cinematic Transtopia,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 17, no. 1 Queer Chinese Screens, eds. Hongwei Bao and Jamie J. Zhao (2023): 81–94.
"Code-Mixing and Code-Switching in Classical Hong Kong Cinemas," Concentric 49, no. 1 (March 2023): 27–47. Outstanding Paper Award, Academy of Hong Kong Studies, 2022–23.
"Interbeing," In Media Res: A Media Commons Project (March 13, 2023).
“Laborer’s Love: An Anthropotechnogenetic Mediation between Cinematism and Animetism,” Journal of Chinese Film Studies 2, no. 2 (November 2022): 239–60.
“Buddhism and Film Theory: Beyond a Legacy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory, ed. Kyle Stevens (Oxford University Press, 2022), 166–84.
“From Extraterritoriality to Extratemporality: Contemporary Media and Politics in Hong Kong,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and the City, eds. Eric Stein, Germaine R. Halegoua, and Brendan Kredell (Routledge, 2022), 329–41.
“Cinematic Imaging and Imagining through the Lens of Buddhism,” in New Takes on Film and Imagination, ed. Sarah Cooper, Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory 43, no. 3 (November 2020): 364–80.
“Illuminating Reality: Cinematic Identification Revisited in the Eyes of Buddhist Philosophies,” in The Structures of the Film Experience by Jean-Pierre Meunier: Historical Assessments and Phenomenological Expansions, eds. Julian Hanich and Daniel Fairfax (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 245–58.
“What Is a ‘Chinese Film Market?’,” Screen 60, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 303–10.
“Rethinking the Sinophone,” Politics and Representation in Sinophone Cinema after the 1980s, eds. Jean-Yves Heurtebise and Corrado Neri, Monde Chinois Nouvelle Asie, no. 57 (2019): 13–24.
“Too Inhuman to Die; Too Ethereal to Become a Ghost: Children are Not Afraid of Death, Children are Afraid of Ghosts,” in Chinese Shock of the Anthropocene: Image, Music and Text in the Age of Climate Change, eds. Kwai-cheung Lo and Jessica Yeung (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 151–76.
“Rebuilding Humanity: Gaze of the Exile and Chinese Independent Cinema,” Global East Asian Cinema: Abjection and Agency, eds. Seung-hoon Jeong, Studies in the Humanities 44, nos. 1–2 and 45, nos. 1–2 (2017–18; March 2019): 148–67.
“The Something of Nothing: Buddhism and The Assassin,” in The Assassin: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s World of Tang China, ed. Peng Hsiao-yen (Hong Kong University Press, 2018), 178–94.
“Too Intimate to Speak: Regional Cinemas and Literatures,” China on the Move: Travel, Exile, and Migration in Chinese Literature and Film of the 20th Century, ed. Frederik Green, Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 15, no. 12 (Winter 2018): 47–72.
“Own-Becoming,” Cinema Journal 57, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 177–80.
“Poetics of Failure: Performing Humanism in Chinese Blockbuster,” in Screening China’s Soft Power, eds. Paola Voci and Luo Hui (Routledge, 2017), 56–72.
“Cinema of Reindividuation and Cultural Extraterritoriality: ‘Chinese’ Dialect Cinemas and Regional Politics,” in The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic Difference, eds. Tijana Mamula and Lisa Patti (Bloomsbury, 2016), 255–76.
"Poetics of Parapraxis and Reeducation: The Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema in the 1950s," in The Poetics of Chinese Cinema, eds., Gary Bettison and James Udden (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 167–83.
"Mirroring-Drifting – Lam Lin-tung and film aesthetics," Asian Cinema 27, no. 1 (April 2016): 29–42.
"Annähernde Realität. Chinesische Ontologie und das Potenzial der Zeit," trans. Simon Frische, Rabbiteye, no. 8 (2016).
"Free-Indirect-Discourse Reboot: Beijing Queer Independent Cinema as a Mediating Environment," Reconstruction 16, no. 2 (2016), journal no longer extant, reposted by readers.
“Revisiting Jia Zhangke: Individuality, Subjectivity, and Autonomy in Contemporary Chinese Independent Cinema,” in The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in 21st Century Cinema, eds. Seung-hoon Jeong and Jeremi Szaniawski (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 323–42.
“Cultural Extraterritoriality: Intra-Regional Politics in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema,” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 1, no. 3 (September 2015): 389–402.
“Performing Nationality: The Fifth Generation as an ‘American’ Transnational Cinema,” in American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows, eds. Lisa Funnell and Man-Fung Yip (New York: Routledge, 2015), 189–203.
“Extraterritorial Cinema: Shanghai Jazz and Post-War Hong Kong Mandarin Musicals,” The Soundtrack 6, nos. 1 and 2 (2014 [2015]): 33–52.
〈放心〉 “Fangxin” [“Putting Down One’s Heart”], 《思逸》 Siyi [Siyi: A Journal of Art and Culture], no. 1 (February 2015): 1–2; journal no longer extant.
〈CEPA前後香港電影對於港人域外意識的交涉〉 “CEPA qian hou Xianggang dianying duiyu Gangren yuwai yishi de jiaoshe” [“Negotiating Extraterritorial Consciousness in Hong Kong Cinema Before and After CEPA”], 《電影藝術》 Dianying yishu [Film Art], no. 356 (2014): 24–31.
“Approaching Reality: Epistemic Distance, Political Crises and Temporal Imaginations in the Sino-French Dialogue on Cinema Ontology,” World Picture Journal, no. 7 (2012), http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_7/Fan.html.
“The Poetics of Addiction: Stardom, ‘Feminized’ Spectatorship, and Inter-Regional Business Relations in the Twilight Series,” Camera Obscura 27, no. 1 (2012): 31–67.
“Redressing the Inaccessible through the Re-Inscribed Body: In the Year of 13 Moons and Bad Education,” in A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, ed. Brigitte Peucker (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 118–41.
“The Cinema of Sun Yu: Ice Cream for the Eye … but with a Homo sacer,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5, no. 3 (2011): 219–51.
“New York Chinatown Theatres under the Hong Kong Circuit System,” Film History 22, no. 1 (March 2010): 108–26.
“The Unanswered Question of Forrest Gump,” Screen 49, no. 4 (Winter 2008), 450-61.
“English Football and Its Hong Kong Television Audience,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 8, no. 1 (2006).
Non-Peer-Reviewed 非同行評審
“From On-Location to the Environment: Chinese Independent Documentaries, 2008–19,” Cine chino del siglo XXI, ed. Carlos F. Heredero/ Caimán Cuadernos de Cine (Seminci: Valladolid International Film Festival, 2019).
“Szukają tungzi dingjing. Kultura filmowa i kino LGBTQI+ od roku 1997” [Locating tungzi cinema: Hong Kong LGBTQI+ films since 1997], in Made in Hong Kong. Kino czasu przemian [Made in Hong Kong: Cinema of a changing time] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo w Podwórku, 2019), 157–80.
《字花》編輯室 Zihua bianjiishi (Editors of Fleurs des lettres), 〈從阿甘本「例外狀態」到香港的「文化域外」〉 “Cong Aganben ‘liwai zhuangtai’ dao Xianggang de ‘wenhua yuwai’: Fan Kele bifang” [From Agamben’s “state of exception” to Hong Kong’s “cultural extraterritoriality”: a written interview with Victor Fan], 《字花》 Zihua [Fleurs des lettres], no. 53 (January–February, 2015): 116–19.
“From the Shadow Play to Electric Shadows,” in Electric Shadows: A Century of Chinese Cinema, ed. James Bell (London: BFI, 2014), 8–13.
“État actuel du cinéma de la Chine continentale: vers une reconfiguration de la création et de la production” [The actual state of mainland Chinese cinema: towards a reconfiguration of creation and production], 24 Images, no. 155 (January 2012): 6–8.
In Film Festival Reporter (later known as Film Festival Today): 2000-2004; Covering the African-Diaspora Film Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, MIX New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, Gen Art, and MOXIE Film.
〈無菲林電影〉 “Wu feilin dianyin” [Cinema without film], in 《突破少年》 Tupo shaonian [Breakthrough: youth edition] (Hong Kong, 1995).
Edited Volumes 編輯
Scent of Boys, NANG, no. 7 (Autumn 2019), co-ed. with Earl Jackson, Jr. (National Chiao Tung U).
“There is Something about Richard Dyer,” co-edited with Lisa Handerson (U of Massachusetts), dossier, Cinema Journal 57, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 148–86.
Post-Socialist China; Post-Martial-Law Taiwan; and Postcolonial Hong Kong: East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 1, no. 3 (September 2015).
Book Reviews 書評
“Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone by Alvin K. Wong,” The China Quarterly (2025).
“Sinoglossia, Edited by Andrea Bachner, Howard Chiang and Yu-lin Lee,” The China Quarterly (2024): 1–2.
“Chinese Film: Realism and Convention from the Silent Era to the Digital Age by Jason McGrath,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (July 2023).
“Ngonsoeng jyugo/Anshang yuge [Ballad on the Shore],” Ethnomusicology Forum 31, no. 2 (2022): 313–6.
“Contemporary Sino-French Cinemas: Absent Fathers, Banned Books, and Red Balloons,” Pacific Affairs 90, no. 3 (2017): 577–79.
"Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema by Jean Ma," Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2016.
"Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915–1945," The China Quarterly 244 (December 2015): 1093–136.
"Giovanni Vitiello.The Libertine’s Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China," Journal of the Society for Ming Studies, no. 68 (September 2013): 83–91.
“Victor Fan on Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China,” Screening the Past, no. 29 (2010).
“Victor Fan on Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies,” in Screening the Past, no. 28 (2010).
“Victor Fan on Hong Kong New Wave Cinema (1978-2000), in Screening the Past, no. 26 (2009).
Academic Lectures, Conferences, and Professional Events 學術講座、研討會、和其它專業活動
Keynote Speaker 主題講者
“Algorizmi: Knowledge Building and Mindfulness,” Workshop on Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism, Université de Montréal, May 18, 2022.
“Extraterritorial Life at the Age of Precarity: Double Occupancy and Parapraxis in Tharlo [2015] and Transit [2018],” First Annual Thomas Elsaesser Memorial Lecture, Columbia University, November 20, 2020.
“Time and Nothingness: Image and Temporality through the Lens of Buddhism,” Training Day, Screen Studies Group, July 10, 2019.
“Time and Nothingness: Image and Temporality through the Lens of Buddhism,” Film-Philosophy Conference, University of Brighton, October 19, 2019.
“Cultural Extraterritoriality: Intra-Regional Politics in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema,” Post Olympics Chinese Cinema Symposium, Bader International Study Centre, Queens University, East Sussex, 2013.
Guest Speaker 客席講者
“Jing-you: The Genius of Lam Nin-tung’s Film Philosophy,” University of Hong Kong, October 29, 2024.
“Decolonizing Theory and Asia as Method: Knowledge/Subjectivity as a Problematic,” Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Asia University, May 8, 2024.
“Ontogenetic Diversity: Rewriting China and the Sinophone through Independent Cinemas,” Transculturality and Diversity in East Asia, Universitat de València, May 17, 2024.
“Interbeing,” Homeland in Transit Roundtable, eikones, University of Basel, November 4, 2023.
Roundtable presentations, The Spirit of Mountains and Water: Gao Shiqiang’s Moving Image Art through Cosmological Thinking, Queen Mary University of London, October 20, 2023.
“Ontogenetic Diversity: Rewriting China and the Sinophone through Independent Cinemas,” Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, September 16, 2023.
“Interbeing,” University of Zurich, May 4, 2023.
“On Cinema Illuminating Reality,” Kunsthistorisches Seminar der Universität Basel, eikones, University of Basel, May 3, 2023.
“The Insight-Image: Illuminating the Reality of Deleuze’s Time-Image,” University of Sheffield, February 23, 2023.
“The Insight-Image: Illuminating the Reality of Deleuze’s Time-Image,” Other Epistemologies Online Lecture Series, University of Zurich, December 8, 2022.
“The Insight-Image: Illuminating the Reality of Deleuze’s Time-Image,” University of Southampton, October 25, 2022.
“Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism,” Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum, Harvard University, September 21, 2022.
“On Karma: Cinematic Technicity-Consciousness and Its Operation,” University of Westminster, April 15, 2021.
“On Karma: Buddhism and Cinematic Technicity,” Triangle Film Salon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, March 9, 2021.
“Locating Fey Mou(s): The Topos of Chinese Film Theory,” Oxford China Forum, January 24, 2021.
“Here and Now: Queer Radical Changes through the Lens of Buddhism,” Sites of Cinema, Columbia University, September 25, 2020.
“Fey Mou: Cinematic Air and Suspended Imagination,” Lecture, Department of Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, March 26, 2019.
“Fey Mou: Cinematic Air and Suspended Imagination”, Lecture and Graduate Seminar, Cambridge Film and Screen Seminar Series, University of Cambridge, January 30, 2019.
"Cinema Ontology Revisited: Rethinking Film Theory through the Lens of Buddhism," University of Hong Kong, 16 October 2018.
"Locating Fey Mou(s): The Topos of Chinese Film Theory," Hong Kong Baptist University, 8 October 2018.
"Time and Nothingness: The Assassin and The Way It Is," Hong Kong Baptist University, 19 November 2018.
「時間/空：觀照《刺客聶隱娘》」 "Shijian/kong: Guanzhao Cike Nie Yinniang" (Time and Nothingness: The Assassin and The Way It Is), 中央研究院 Academica Sinica, Taipei, 22 November 2018.
“Free-Indirect-Discourse Reboot: Beijing Queer Independent Cinema as a Mediating Environment,” Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University, December 2017.
“Nature, Phenomenon, and Appearance: Restoring Buddhist Concepts in Early Chinese Film Theory,” Lecture, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, December 14, 2016.
“The Something of Nothing: Buddhism and The Assassin,” Research Seminar, Centre for China Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2016.
“Fey Mou: The Presence of an Absence,” Yale-NUS Symposium on Film and Painting, Yale-NUS College, Singapore, March 5, 2015.
“Cultural Extraterritoriality: Intra-Regional Politics in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema,” Research Seminar, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong, 2014.
“Cinema of Thought: Iwasaki Akira and Directed Consciousness in Shanghai Marxist Film Theory, 1930–35,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference, Korean National University of Arts, Seoul, 2014.
“Approaching Reality: Reconfiguring Chinese Cinema Ontology,” Communication and Symphony: A China-UK Dialogue on Chinese Cinema Studies, July 9–10, 2014.
Organizer 主辦
The 14th Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference, University of Hong Kong, May 22–25, 2025.
Thinking Cinema, Otherwise, King’s College London, June 7, 2024.
Hong Kong Independent Cinema Workshop, King’s College London and Hong Kong Baptist University, April 15, 2022.
Queer Asia as Method: Roundtable and Townhall, King’s College London and University of Nottingham, 3–5 and 11–12 September 2021.
Critical Voices; Critical Silences: Chinese and Sinophone Film Theory and Criticism, Chinese Visual Festival, King’s College London, May 4, 2018.
The Future of Chinese Independent Cinema, Chinese Visual Festival, King’s College London, May 4, 2017.
InterMedia Workshop, King’s College London, with participants from London and Montréal, October 17, 2016.
Presenter 講者
By Invitation 應邀
“Narrative, and Self-Understanding in the Light of Radical Life Extension” Roundtable, Literature, Film, and the Desirability of Life Extension, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, 2 December 2025.
“A Way Out: Reanimating Ecological Thinking between Power and Knowledge,” Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, November 2024.
“(Un)spatialising Extraterritoriality: 30 Years of Adonis as a Process of Resistance,” Urban Representation in Popular Media of Western Europe and China Conference, University of Cologne, May 24-25, 2024.
“The Way It Is: Buddhist Ecological Thinking on Power and Knowledge,” Harvard University, March 8, 2024.
“Code-Mixing and Code-Switching in Classical Hong Kong Cinemas,” Academy of Hong Kong Studies, 2022–23, March 7, 2024.
“Ontogenetic Diversity: Rewriting China and the Sinophone through Independent Cinema,” Homeland in Transit, Basel, November 4, 2023.
“Interbeing and Ontogenetic Diversity,” International Symposium on “Affective Anthropocene: Contextualizing Feelings and Environments under Climate Change,” Hong Kong Baptist University, June 20, 2023.
“Film Censorship in a Society of Control: Pre-Emption, Fear, and Hostile Environment,” Censorship and Creativity in Hong Kong Cinema, Chinese University of Hong Kong, May 19, 2023.
“‘Ecocivilization’: On Methods of Governmentality,” Chinese Digital Media Workshop, August 20, 2022.
“Godspeed: Memories, Transindividuation, and Becoming Taiwanese,” Webinar 7: Nation and Memory, International Symposium on Taiwan Cinema, May 26, 2022.
“To the Other Shore: How Rodowick Conveys Me from Deleuze to Buddhism,” A Conversation between Art, Film, and Philosophy: A Conference in Honor of D. N. Rodowick, University of Chicago, May 13–14, 2022.
“Ecology: From Governmentality to Interdependencies,” Cloud, Heat, Sea, Wind in the Light of Ecological Civilization,” Hong Kong Baptist University, April 30–May 1, 2022.
“Extratemporality: Surveillance, Governmentality, and Digital Existence,” Hong Kong Independent Cinema Workshop, King’s College London and Hong Kong Baptist University, April 15, 2022.
“Extraterritoriality and Extratemporality: Hong Kong Queer Cultural Histories and Historiographies,” Queer Asia as Method: Roundtable and Townhall, King’s College London and University of Nottingham, 3 September 2021.
“From Extraterritoriality to Extratemporality: Contemporary Media and Politics in Hong Kong,” Hong Kong Studies Association, May 29, 2021.
“Individuality, Subjectivity, and Autonomy (Agency) in the Cinematic Experience,” Response to Hauke Lehmann, “Film-Viewing and Commonality,” Cinepoetics, Frei Universität Berlin, and King’s College London, Berlin, October 31, 2019.
“Contemporary Chinese-language Independent Cinemas and their Future,” University of Southampton, September 21, 2019.
“Queer Asia as a Field?”, Queer Asia, University of Westminster, Panelist, July 17, 2019.
“Hong Kong 1967: Towards an Extraterritorial Aesthetics of Cinema,” The Radical Aesthetic: Forms, Commitments, Traditions, University of Freiburg, June 21, 2019.
“Hong Kong 1967/2014: Cinemas of Political Precarity––Then and Now,” Legacies of Leftism in Film and Media Theory: East Asia and Beyond, Columbia University, February 28, 2019.
“Observation-Illumination: Cinema Aesthetics and Spectatorship through the Lens of Chan (Zen or Dhyāna),” Critical Paradigms of Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong Baptist University, September 28, 2018.
“Love and Fear of Mediated Reality: The Emergence of Hong Kong’s Extraterritorial Consciousness,” 1968 and Its Legacies, King’s College London, June 15, 2018.
“Breaking the Wave: Women and Queer Filmmaking and Criticism in the Early Hong Kong New Wave,” Critical Voices; Critical Silences: Chinese and Sinophone Film Theory and Criticism, Chinese Visual Festival, King’s College London, May 4, 2018.
“Too Inhuman to Die; Too Ethereal to Become a Ghost: Children are Not Afraid of Death, Children are Afraid of Ghosts,” Anthropocene and Contemporary Chinese Cultures, Hong Kong Baptist University, January 5, 2018.
“Illuminating Reality: Cinema Ontology Revisited in the Eyes of Buddhist Philosophies,” The Structures of the Film Experience: Jean-Pierre Meunier, Film-Phenomenology and Contemporary Film Studies, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, November 25, 2017.
“Tracing Sense-Media: The Archive as Consciousness,” Shadow History: Archive and Intermediality in Chinese Cinema: An International Conference in Honor of the Paul Fonoroff Collection, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California Berkeley, October 14, 2017.
“What is a ‘Chinese Film Market?’: Ontogenetic Changes and Interdependent Relationships between Studio and Independent Films,” Chinese Film Market and Asian Cinema, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, August 26, 2017.
“The Future of Chinese Independent Cinema: Individuality, Subjectivity, and Autonomy,” in The Future of Chinese Independent Cinema, Chinese Visual Festival, King’s College London, May 4, 2017.
“Interdependent Origination,” InterMedia Workshop, King’s College London, October 17, 2016.
“Subjectival Catharsis: Time and Desubjectivization in Pema Tseden’s Tharlo,” Anthropocene and Contemporary Chinese Cultures, Hong Kong Baptist University, September 20, 2016.
“Extraterritoriality and the Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema in the 1950s,” Emergency Cultures: New Approaches to the Study of Late Colonialism and the Cold War in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, University of Nottingham, July 8, 2016.
“The Something of Nothing: Zen Buddhism and The Assassin,” The Assassin: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Wuxia Aesthetic, Academia Sinica, Taipei, June 30, 2016.
“Nature, Phenomenon, and Appearance: Restoring Buddhist Concepts in Early Chinese Film Theory,” Film Theory in Media History: “Nodes” and “Edges,” Shanghai-Berkeley Film and Media Research Center, Shanghai Film Academy, Shanghai University, and Editorial Board, Diaying yishu [Film art], Shanghai, June 3–5, 2016.
“Zhu/Feizhu: Towards a Buddhist Understanding of Video Game Temporality,” Gaming East Asia, Princeton University, April 8–9, 2016.
“Free-Indirect-Discourse Reboot: Beijing Queer Independent Cinema as a Mediating Environment,” The Invisible: asia • theory • visuality conference, Princeton University, November 13–14, 2015.
“Cinema at Play: The Cantonese Sound Film as an Extraterritorial Discourse, 1930–42,” New Angle on Chinese Film History, University of Minnesota, August 13–15, 2015.
“Cultural Extraterritoriality: Intra-Regional Politics in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema,” Chinese Film Research Symposium, University of Nottingham, June 5, 2015.
“Fey Mou: The Presence of an Absence,” Yale-NUS Symposium on Film and Painting, Yale-NUS College, Singapore, March 5, 2015.
“Cinema of Thought: Iwasaki Akira and Directed Consciousness in Shanghai Marxist Film Theory, 1930–35,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference, Korean National University of Arts, Seoul, 2014.
“Approaching Reality: Reconfiguring Chinese Cinema Ontology,” Communication and Symphony: A China-UK Dialogue on Chinese Cinema Studies, July 9–10, 2014.
“An Alternative Mode of Realism?: Theoretical Debates on Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema, 1960–82,” Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theories, Ann Arbor, September 2012.
“Han Han: Mass Cultural Critique as a Performance of Failure,” Politics of Potentiality, McGill University, Montréal, May 2012.
“Hollywood, Film Theory, and Domestic Scandal: Linguistic Registers and the Negotiation of Female Sexualities in Cinematic Discourses,” Shifting Language Registers in Late Qing/Republican China, McGill University, Montréal, 2010.
“Sports, ‘Cinema,’ and the Myth of a Haunting Dream,” Asia in Motion, Yale University, New Haven, 2009.
Society of Cinema and Media Studies 電影媒體研究協會
“Platformativity and Moral Residue: Image and Political Engagement Today,” Chicago, 2025.
“A Way Out: Reanimating Ecological Thinking between Power and Knowledge,” Denver 2023.
“Extratemporality: Digital Surveillance, Digital Existence, and Documentary Filmmaking,” Panelist, “Chicago” (Online), 2022.
“Poetic Consciousness: Cinema as an Affective Environment,” Panelist, ‘Chicago’ (Online), 2021.
“Rethinking Humanity: Political Activism as a Media Environment Understood through Buddhism,” Panelist, Seattle, 2019.
“Illuminating Reality: Cinema Ontology Revisited in the Eyes of Buddhist Philosophies,” Panelist, Toronto, 2018.
“From Media Situations to Media Theory: Media Theorization in a Global Context,” Workshop Participant, Chicago, 2017.
Richard Dyer in the House of Cinema, Co-organizer and Panelist, Atlanta, 2016.
“Classical Cantonese Cinema as a Public Sphere: The Cantonese Theater Film,” Panelist, Atlanta, 2016.
“Subjectival Catharsis: Time and De-Subjectivization in Pema Tseden’s Old Dog,” Panelist, Montréal, 2015.
“Extraterritorial Cinema: Shanghai Jazz and Postwar Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema, 1945–49,” Panelist, Seattle, 2014.
“Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema: Restaging the Desire for and Resentment Toward ‘National’ Integration,” Panelist, Chicago, 2013.
“Cantonese Cinema: Industrial Crisis and Reconstruction, 1937–54,” Panelist, Boston, 2012.
“Double Occupancy and Nationalism: Contesting Notions of Citizenship in Chinese-Hollywood Co-Production of the Historical Epic,” Panelist, New Orleans, 2011.
BAFTSS 英國電影電視屏幕研究協會
“The Way It Is: Buddhist Ecological Thinking on Power and Knowledge,” University of Lincoln, 2023.
“From Extraterritoriality to Extratemporality: Contemporary Media and Politics in Hong Kong,” Online, 2022.
“Buddhism as a Technology of Recognition,” Online, 2021.
NECS 歐洲電影研究網絡
“Resonance, Empathy, and Non-Differentiation: Pema Tseden’s Jinpa,” Gdańsk, 2019.
“Love and Fear of Mediated Reality: The Emergence of Hong Kong’s Extraterritorial Consciousness,” Amsterdam, 2018.
Asian Cinema Studies Society 亞洲電影研究協會
Keynote Moderator, Thomas Lamarre, “The Anime World: How Infrastructures Affect Sovereignty,” May 22, 2025.
Workshop: Decolonising and Deterritorialising Methods of Film and Media Philosophy, May 23, 2025.
“Locating Tathātā: The Poetics of Non-Illusive Reality,” University of Lancaster, July 10, 2017.
“Cultural Extraterritoriality: Intra-Regional Politics in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema,” July 14–16, Universidade de Macau, 2014.
American Comparative Literature Association 美國比較文學協會
“Shanghai and the World: Double Negotiation between Cinema and Literature in the 1930s,” March 31–April 1, Vancouver, 2011.
“Too Close to Touch, Too Painful to Remember: Donnie Darko,” April 24–27, Long Beach, 2008.
“Agamben and Photogénie,” March 23–26, Princeton, 2006.
“Football and Hong Kong Television Audience,” March 11–13, The Pennsylvania State University, 2005.
Others 其它
“Decolonising and Deterritorialising Methods of Film and Media Philosophy,” Film-Philosophy, Chapman University, June 15, 2023.
“Observation-Illumination: Buddhist Concepts in Chinese Film Theory,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, July 28–30, Seoul, 2017.
“Open Discourses on Sexuality in Shanghai Film Writing and Criticism in the 1930s,” Association for Asian Studies, Toronto, March 15–18, 2012.
“Homosexuality and Early Hitchcock Cinema,” Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference, Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University, 2007.
“Opium and Football,” North American Society of Sociology of Sports, Winston-Salem, NC, 2005.
“Racism in English Football,” Sociology Student Conference, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 2005.
“English Hooliganism and Italian Ultra,” Department of French and Italian Literature, University of Indiana, Bloomington, 2005.
“Kenneth Anger and Ambiguity,” Department of Comparative Literature, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2005.
Public Lectures 公開演講
“A Brief History of Queer Chinese Cinema,” Library, BFI, September 8, 2014.
“Sex, Politics and Aesthetics in the Shanghai Golden Age,” BFI, June 3, 2014.
“Hollywood and China––A Many Splendored Thing,” Confucius Institute in Quebec, Montréal, April 28 and May 4, 2011.
“The Rise and Fall of Sun Sing Theatre,” Museum of Chinese in America, New York, December 16, 2010.
Guest Lectures in Classes 客席講座
Topics in Asian Media Studies, Tomiko Yoda and Alexander Zahlten, Harvard University, 2020.
Seminar series, Department of Economics and Department of Chinese Literature, Keio University, Tokyo, December 18 and 20, 2018.
“Norwegian Wood: Prosthetic Memory and Poetics of Parapraxis,” Taiwan Chengchi University, Taipei, Skype, 2013.
“Orientalism Takes Effort: Business and Readings of the Fifth Generation Films,” McGill University, Anthropology, Montréal, 2010, 2011, and 2013.
“Japanese Bunraku and the Japanese New Wave,” Georgia Institute of Technology, Humanities, Atlanta, Ga., 2008.
“Women in Japanese Horror Films,” Smith College, Film Studies, Northampton, Mass., 2007.
“History of Hong Kong Cinema and Negotiations of Modernity,” Yale University, Summer Film Institute, New Haven, 2005 and 2006.
Media Interviews 媒體訪問
Asian Movie Pulse, “Tribute to Mainland Chinese Cinema,” April 23, 2025.
BBC, “Past Lives: This untranslatable Korean word for eternal love has ancient Buddhist roots,” by Hahna Yoon, March 21, 2024.
BBC, “Film Programme,” Interview on Spring in a Small Town (with Noah Cowan)
FACULTI, “Approaching Reality: Cinema Potentiality in Chinese Film Theory,”