The Ultimate Female Auteur: Visuality, subjectivity, and history in the works of Peng Xiaolian

Peng Xiaolian is a rare and prolific Chinese author who writes both
fiction and non‐fiction works and directs both dramatic and documentary
films. Peng has not only written, cowritten, or rewritten all the screenplays of
her eight dramatic features and two documentaries but is also the author of
one novel, twelve novellas, over a dozen short stories, four book‐length
memoirs, three collections of film reviews, and numerous essays. The existing
scholarly studies, however, nearly all focus on Peng’s dramatic films, with
much less, if any, attention directed at her writing and documentaries. To
really understand Peng as a film auteur, however, it is necessary to look at
her films and writings together. Given the quantity and complexity of her
works and the space limitations of this article, I examine Peng’s subversion of
the conventional treatment of character, location, and time in three thematic
sections reflecting the key narrative motifs in her work. I first summarize
existing studies of Peng’s films, highlighting the rarely examined interaction
between visuality and spatiality in her films. Then, after defining her sense of
time in narrative, I demonstrate how family history and self‐reflexivity are the
major difference between her films and her nonfiction works. Last but not
least, I discuss how, through her use of multilayered narratives constructed
by the female voice and subjectivity, her complete repertoire constitutes a
unique history of modern Chinese women. This article aims to demonstrate
how, through her use of multilayered narratives constructed by the female
voice and subjectivity, her complete repertoire constitutes a unique history of
modern Chinese women.