Dr Kiki Tianqi Yu

Profile

After receiving an MPhil in social political science at Cambridge University, Kiki pursued her doctorate research on documentary film and personal cinema with a focus on China at CREAM, Westminster University. Examining how philosophies in non-western cultures and approaches in other disciplines enhance our understanding of global cinema, her research, in theory and practice, are often interdisciplinary and echo the ethos of decolonising film studies.

Kiki’s works include three strands:

One area is cinema and moving images through eastern philosophies. She is currently engaging cinema with Daoism, building a theoretical framework to explore cinema aesthetics, ethics and practices through Daoist philosophy, and constructing a comparative dialogue with film phenomenology and posthumanist thinking.

The second area is documentary image and nonfiction film, especially on essay film, personal cinema, first person documentary, artists moving image and ethics of documentary filmmaking from non-western perspectives.

The third area is women’s cinema, women filmmakers, and independent cinema culture in China and Asia at large (East, South, Southeast, Central and West Asia).

Kiki was invited as a keynote speaker at European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) annual conference 2018, and she is also a founding co-convener of BAFTSS East Asian Screen Cultures Special Interest Group.

Kiki’s first monograph ‘My’ Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China (Edinburgh University Press, 2019a) investigates filmmaking as social practice through cultural-sociological perspective. It argues that the Confucian concept of the relational self still largely underpins how individuals understand the self, and analyses how filmmakers make socially and culturally rooted ethical and aesthetic choices. She also co-edited China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for 21st Century (Bloomsbury, 2014), and ‘Women’s First Person Documentary in East Asia’ a special issue of Studies in Documentary Film (with Alisa Lebow, 2020).

She is currently writing her second monograph on Daoism and Cinema, which engages global cinema and film practice with Daoist philosophy, decoloniality, environmental humanities, East Asian art and literary history, and feminist studies. Emphasising Daoism’s conceptual capacity, and building on existing discussions on cinema’s aesthetic, philosophical, political and ecological capacities, this project aims to build a Daoist philosophical framework to understand what cinema is and what cinema can do, expanding the way we experience moving image, and intervening the canonical western centred post-humanist theorisation of cinema.

As a filmmaker, her first feature documentary China’s van Goghs (co-directed with Haibo Yu, 2016) involves art history, labour politics, and globalization, asking: could the act of copying be a path towards originality? Funded by IDFA Bertha fund, Denmark International Support, Dutch Film Fund, Shenzhen Cultural Fund, CBC, DR, etc, the film did very well after its completion. It has been shown at over 30 international festivals, won 8 awards, theatrically released in France, Japan, Hong Kong and Italy, and received very positive reviews in the Hollywood Reporter, Artnet, de Volkstrant, VPRO, etc. Her film works also include Photographing Shenzhen (2006), Memory of Home (2009) which were shown at various festivals and collected by DSLCollection, and Yale Film Centre.

Kiki also produced Jia Yuchuan’s 17 years’ production Two Lives of Li Ermao (2019) which premiered at IDFA 2019, and won the best Audience’s award at Royal Anthropology Institution Film Festival 2021. Through Jia’s intimate personal lens, the film traces the life of a transgender Chinese migrant worker, Li Ermao, on her transitioning from being male to female, then back to male.

As a film curator, her curatorial projects include Polyphonic China: Chinese independent documentary (London 2009), New Generation Chinese Cinema (London 20210), Memory Talks: Personal Cinema (Shanghai 2017) and most recently The Spirit of Mountains and Water: Gao Shiqiang’s Moving Image Art through Cosmological Thinking at BLOC (London 2023). She also led and co-curated the film season Dancing with Water: Women’s cinema from contemporary China (www.dancingwithwaterfilm.com ) with Centre for Public Engagement Large Grant, showcasing 15 features and 9 shorts by mostly PRC women filmmakers at London’s Bertha DocHouse, the Garden Cinema, and BLOC (Feb-Apr 2024).

Kiki also enjoys writing column articles in English and Chinese for a wider readership.

Teaching

Core modules:

• FLM4205 Decolonising Approaches to Film Analysis (co-convene with Ashvin Devasundaram)

• FLM7216 Creative Documentary

• SMLM035 – MA Film Studies Core Module

• FLM5208 Visual Essay (in the past)

Optional modules:

• FLM6037/FLM7037 Cinema and Eastern Philosophies                                                                                                     
• FLM6210 –Cinemas in Contemporary China

Research

Research Interests:

• Non-western film theory and film philosophy
• Cinema and eastern philosophies
• Practice-based research
• Various aspects of Documentary and nonfiction film, including first person documentary, essay film, amateur cinema, and found footage
• Sustainable cinema and filmmaking
• Women’s cinema and women filmmakers
• Chinese language cinemas
• East Asian Cinema and artist moving image

Publications

Books:

Book:

• Essay filmmaking and Narrative Techniques (co-edited with Ronama Turina), Intellect, 2025
• Special Issue of Studies in Documentary Film: “Women's First Person Documentary Practices from East Asia: Some local Feminist Approaches”, co-edited with Alisa Lebow, March. 2020
• ‘My’ Self On Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualising China, Edinburgh University Press, 2019
• China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for 21st Century, co-edited with Matthew Johnson, Keith Wagner, Luke Vulpiani, Bloomsbury, 2014

Journal articles, book chapters, and reviews:

• "Cinematic ideorealm and cinema following Dao", Screen, Volume 64, Issue 4, Winter 2023. 
• “Cinema of qi: a Daoist approach to ecological, sensory and affective cinema through vital energy” in Handbook of Documentary Film, edited by Kate Nash and Deane Williams, Intellect, 2024.
• “Three Modes of Independent Creative Documentary Production and the Rise of the Industrial Mode” in Chinese Independent Cinema, Amsterdam University Press, 2024.

• Editor’s “Introduction”, in Special Issue “Women's First Person Documentary Practices from East Asia”, Studies in Documentary Film, 2020
• "In conversation with Wen Hui", in Special Issue “Women's First Person Documentary Practices from East Asia”, Studies in Documentary Film, 2020
• “First Person Expression on ‘non-western’ Screens  - a case on China” in Creative Practice edited by Agnieszka Piotrowska, Edinburgh University Press, 2020
• “Image-Writing: The Essayistic/Sanwen in Chinese Nonfiction Cinema and Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (2015) ”, in World Cinema and the Essay Film, edited by Brenda Hollweg and Igor Krstic, Edinburgh University Press, 2019
• “Documentary”, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Vol.10: 1, 2016
• Co-written with A. T. McKenna. ‘Internationalising Memory: Traumatic Histories and the PRC's Quest to Win an Oscar', in Chinese Cinemas: International Perspectives, edited by Felicia Chan and Andy Willis, Routledge, 2016
• “Camera Activism in Contemporary People's Republic of China: Provocative Documentation, First Person Confrontation, and Collective Force in Ai Weiwei's Lao Ma Ti Hua”, Studies in Documentary Film, Vol.9:1, 2015
• “Chinese Photography & Surrealism - Walking at the Extreme Edge of Rationality” in Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 2:1, 2015
• “Going Global – Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival 2013”, Studies in Documentary Film, Vol. 8:1, 2014
• “An Inward Gaze at Home: Amateur Documentary Filmmaking in Contemporary China” In Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web, edited by Monahan Barry, Laura Rascaroli and Gwenda Young, Bloomsbury, 2014
• “Towards a Communicative Practice: First Person Filmmaking in Twenty-first century China.” In China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for Twenty-first Century, edited by Johnson et al., Bloomsbury, 2014

Co-written with Keith Wagner: ‘Introduction: China’s iGeneration Cinema: Dispersion, Individualization and Post WTO Moving Image Practices.’ In China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for Twenty-first Century, edited by Johnson et al., Bloomsbury, 2014

Supervision

Current PhD Supervision:

Srikrupa Vedal: My body feels with me: Exploring embodied trauma on women's bodies through participatory filmmaking (Co-supervised with Dr Libby Saxton)

Wanzhou Xiao: Cinema is metaphor: The use of audio-visual film critism to explore metaphors in contemporary American cinema (Co-supervised with Dr Guy Westwell)

Iris Yunke Li: Psychogeography in Post-millennial Chinese Cinematic Cities (Co-supervised with Janet Harbord)

Yue Liu: Contemporary women's cinema in China: cinematic practices of Chinese women filmmakers in a complex local socio-spatial landscape (Co-supervised with Lucy Bolton)

Xiaoxin Cheng: Between Worlds: Exploring Family Dynamics and Cultural Identity in British Chinese Cinema (Co-supervised with Grazia Ingravalle)

Yuehan Liu: Exploring the representations of space in Asian slow cinema (Co-supervised with Dr Anat Pick and Ashvin Devasundaram)

Kiki would not be able to review any PhD proposal for 2025 entry.