The 1990s witnessed internationally the end of Cold War, the Internet boom, rapid globalization, and drastic socio-economic transformation towards Westernization in China, which have resulted in multifarious changes in people’s lifestyle and cultural values in Chinese society. Many post-socialist Chinese films, such as Mountains May Depart (山河故人, dir. Jia Zhangke, 2015) and So Long, My Son (地久天长, dir. Wang Xiaoshuai, 2019), have often centered the Chinese family, directly or indirectly, reflecting the various familial challenges and crises that have arisen during the tumultuous periods of economic reform, political policy or conflict, generational difference, and diasporic movement that have ensued from 1990 to the present.            

     This panel invites presentations that explore and analyze the lives and relationships of family members in cinema as they undergo the stresses and dilemmas of a society engaged in impactful transformations and Westernization in China. We also welcome film studies on the lives of families leaving China for the West to live in diaspora from the 1990s to now. Do these post-socialist Chinese films pose any view of the future of Chinese families as they venture into an increasingly international and postmodern world? Will the family as an institution survive the agony and restructuring of Chinese society as it grows ever more materialistic and global? What generational differences and conflicts result from the differences between Chinese and Western cultural values? These are only a few of the questions the panel might address.