1. A Mirror to Society: Political Narratives and Self-Reflection in Chinese Cinema (2025)
By Yilin Zhu at the University of Windsor
By Yilin Zhu at the University of Windsor
This research explores how contemporary Chinese filmmakers employ self-reflexivity—the cinematic integration of personal experience and political history—to address collective memory, social trauma, and national identity. Through comparative analysis of the works of Lou Ye, Chen Kaige, and Jia Zhangke, the study examines how visual elements such as production design, cinematography, lighting, costume, and colour are strategically used to transform socio-political experiences into emotionally resonant visual storytelling.
As both a filmmaker and researcher, I created the short film Nostalgia and Loss, which reflects the psychological tension and emotional dislocation of post-pandemic Shanghai. Inspired by my own immigrant experience, the film serves as a practical exploration of reflexive visual language, revealing how deeply personal stories can mirror broader historical and political realities.
This thesis bridges theory and creative practice, offering a methodological framework for filmmakers interested in using cinema as a tool for cultural introspection and political commentary. Nostalgia and Loss has garnered attention for its emotional depth and stylistic rigour, and the project has been nominated as a potential Governor General’s Gold Medal recipient—an honour awarded to the most outstanding graduate student at the University of Windsor.
Ultimately, this research affirms the significance of self-reflexive filmmaking in shaping global perceptions of contemporary Chinese society and its evolving cinematic identity.
2. Vital Image: A Practice-Based Investigation into Media Ontology and Non-Human Cinema
Ongoing research by Yilin Zhu
Ongoing research by Yilin Zhu
Vital Image is an evolving conceptual framework that asks:
What if media is alive—and no longer needs us to be seen?
Developed through the creation of It’s Me, a 70-minute experimental film, this practice-based research investigates the ontological status of media in the age of AI and algorithmic perception. The film is structured not by story, but by six perceptual phases—Emergence, Sensing, Autopoiesis, Entropy, Mutation, and Oblivion—simulating the life cycle of a media-being: a non-human image that senses, stutters, collapses, and disappears on its own terms.
Rather than illustrating a theory, It’s Me embodies a question:
If media can generate, decay, and outlive human intention, what kind of ethics or attention does it demand?
The project is grounded in a lineage of Deleuze’s time-image, McLuhan’s media-body, Kittler’s materialist media theory, and post-humanist ethics. In this context, the Vital Image is not a metaphor but a speculative cinematic subject—an image that lives, mutates, and forgets.
This work forms the theoretical and practical foundation for Zhu’s future Doctorate in Fine Arts (DFA), continuing through experimental film, critical writing, and expanded cinema installations that explore non-human spectatorship, the collapse of narrative function, and the cultural afterlife of moving images.