Locating Chinese screens: Introduction to a special issue on film exhibition

Abstract This introduction situates the topic of film exhibition in Chinese and Sinophone cinema studies in relation to the approaches of new cinema history and the crisis of traditional cinematic institutions brought about by digitization and the COVID-19 pandemic. It gives an overview of the contributions by drawing several broad conclusions, highlighting problems of infrastructure, educational cinema, the relationship between what is on and off screen, and the contextualization of film exhibition in cultural history.