Kristof van den Troost is a Lecturer and MA Deputy Programme Director for the Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He completed an MA in Sinology at the Catholic University of Leuven, and a PhD in Chinese Studies at CUHK. His main research interests are Chinese film history, genre studies, and the representation of crime in Hong Kong cinema. He was recently published in Always in the Dark: A Study of Hong Kong Gangster Films, a collection of essays assembled by the Hong Kong Film Archive.
Dr. van den Troost spoke for YCW about Jiang Wen’s Let the Bullets Fly, a 2010 Chinese blockbuster that was perceived by some as a veiled criticism of the Communist Party under a layer of populist entertainment. He reflected on the film’s similarities to the American Western, as well as the meaning of the historical references peppered throughout, exploring the relevance of “revolution” in China today as seen through the eyes of one of the country’s most important living directors.
