Dr Kiki Tianqi Yu is a Senior Lecturer in Film at Queen Mary University of London, as well as a writer, filmmaker, and curator. She is the author of ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), the co-editor of China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the 21 Century (Bloomsbury 2014) and a special issue on East Asian women’s personal cinema for Studies in Documentary Film (2020 14:1). Kiki’s award-winning films include Memory of Home (2009), China’s van Goghs (2016) , and The Two Lives of Li Ermao (2019. Her curatorial projects include “Dancing with Water: women’s cinema from contemporary China” (Feb-Apr 2024) at various venues in London.

• List of Figures List of Main Terms with Chinese Translations List of Names with Chinese Character Translations Acknowledgements Introduction: Action, Amateurness and the Changing Sense of the Individual Self 1. Female First Person Documentary Practice: Negotiating Gendered Expectations 2. Amateurness and an Inward Gaze at Home 3. Nostalgia toward Laojia: Old Home as an Imagined Past 4. First Person Action Documentary Practice: Longing for a More Politicised Space 5. The Problematic Public Self: Ethics, Camera and Language in Contestable Minjian Public Spaces 6. Camera Activism: Provocative Documentation, First Person Confrontation and Collective Force 7. Whose Self on Camera? Motives, Mistrust, Disputed Authenticities 8. From Fragile First Person Documentary Practice to Popular Online First Person Live Streaming Broadcast – Zhibo: Changing Intentions, Changing Individual Selves Filmography Bibliography Index

Understanding first person filmmaking in China as always already political, this study breaks new ground in considering the particularities of this personal form of filmmaking as it emerges in the late 20th Century China. With in-depth case studies written by a scholar who is also a filmmaker, this study is a welcome reassessment of the predominantly western-oriented scholarship on subjective/autobiographical/first person film. Tianqi Yu’s book is a major contribution to the field.

Dr Kiki Tianqi Yu is a Senior Lecturer in Film at Queen Mary University of London, as well as a writer, filmmaker, and curator. She is the author of ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), the co-editor of China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the 21 Century (Bloomsbury 2014) and a special issue on East Asian women’s personal cinema for Studies in Documentary Film (2020 14:1). Kiki’s award-winning films include Memory of Home (2009), China’s van Goghs (2016) , and The Two Lives of Li Ermao (2019. Her curatorial projects include “Dancing with Water: women’s cinema from contemporary China” (Feb-Apr 2024) at various venues in London.

• List of Figures List of Main Terms with Chinese Translations List of Names with Chinese Character Translations Acknowledgements Introduction: Action, Amateurness and the Changing Sense of the Individual Self 1. Female First Person Documentary Practice: Negotiating Gendered Expectations 2. Amateurness and an Inward Gaze at Home 3. Nostalgia toward Laojia: Old Home as an Imagined Past 4. First Person Action Documentary Practice: Longing for a More Politicised Space 5. The Problematic Public Self: Ethics, Camera and Language in Contestable Minjian Public Spaces 6. Camera Activism: Provocative Documentation, First Person Confrontation and Collective Force 7. Whose Self on Camera? Motives, Mistrust, Disputed Authenticities 8. From Fragile First Person Documentary Practice to Popular Online First Person Live Streaming Broadcast – Zhibo: Changing Intentions, Changing Individual Selves Filmography Bibliography Index

Understanding first person filmmaking in China as always already political, this study breaks new ground in considering the particularities of this personal form of filmmaking as it emerges in the late 20th Century China. With in-depth case studies written by a scholar who is also a filmmaker, this study is a welcome reassessment of the predominantly western-oriented scholarship on subjective/autobiographical/first person film. Tianqi Yu’s book is a major contribution to the field.

Dr Kiki Tianqi Yu is a Senior Lecturer in Film at Queen Mary University of London, as well as a writer, filmmaker, and curator. She is the author of ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), the co-editor of China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the 21 Century (Bloomsbury 2014) and a special issue on East Asian women’s personal cinema for Studies in Documentary Film (2020 14:1). Kiki’s award-winning films include Memory of Home (2009), China’s van Goghs (2016) , and The Two Lives of Li Ermao (2019. Her curatorial projects include “Dancing with Water: women’s cinema from contemporary China” (Feb-Apr 2024) at various venues in London.

• List of Figures List of Main Terms with Chinese Translations List of Names with Chinese Character Translations Acknowledgements Introduction: Action, Amateurness and the Changing Sense of the Individual Self 1. Female First Person Documentary Practice: Negotiating Gendered Expectations 2. Amateurness and an Inward Gaze at Home 3. Nostalgia toward Laojia: Old Home as an Imagined Past 4. First Person Action Documentary Practice: Longing for a More Politicised Space 5. The Problematic Public Self: Ethics, Camera and Language in Contestable Minjian Public Spaces 6. Camera Activism: Provocative Documentation, First Person Confrontation and Collective Force 7. Whose Self on Camera? Motives, Mistrust, Disputed Authenticities 8. From Fragile First Person Documentary Practice to Popular Online First Person Live Streaming Broadcast – Zhibo: Changing Intentions, Changing Individual Selves Filmography Bibliography Index

Understanding first person filmmaking in China as always already political, this study breaks new ground in considering the particularities of this personal form of filmmaking as it emerges in the late 20th Century China. With in-depth case studies written by a scholar who is also a filmmaker, this study is a welcome reassessment of the predominantly western-oriented scholarship on subjective/autobiographical/first person film. Tianqi Yu’s book is a major contribution to the field.