Thinking with Yingjin Zhang

In the limited space of this short reflection, I trace a few instances of Professor Yingjin Zhang’s scholarship during the last decade and a half of his life, focusing on his contributions to our understanding of contemporary Chinese independent documentary, Taiyu films from 1960s Taiwan, playfulness in Chinese cultural production, and the relationship between self and other and politics and poetics. My choice to focus on four articles dating from 2007 to 2019 has much to do with my own scholarly interest. Zhang’s insights in these studies are truly inspirational for my current preoccupation with understanding the Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens and his generation of interwar international avant-gardes and their contemporary transformations.