About Dennis Lo
Dennis Lo is an Associate Professor of Global Cinemas in the English Department at James Madison University. He received a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at UCLA in 2015, and currently teaches histories of global cinema, new media theories, media industries, and transnational authors and genres, with a specific focus on Chinese-language cinemas. His research explores the intersections of Chinese-language film aesthetics, cultural geography, cinematic ecocriticism, media anthropology, and critical theories of extended reality (XR) media.
His first monograph, The Authorship of Place: A Cultural Geography of the New Chinese Cinemas (2020), explores the politics and aesthetics of rural location shooting in Chinese-language cinemas. His work has also been published as a chapter in Production Studies, The Sequel!, as well as in numerous refereed journals, including New Cinemas, Film-Philosophy, and Asian Cinema.
He is currently shooting a series of experimental, location-shot XR video essays that combine emerging technologies of AR capture, 360 VR, and photogrammetric 3D scans. The research findings from these experimental video essay shorts will directly inform his second book project, which investigates the impact of XR media on perceptions of place.
Featured Projects
Translocality XR Series (2024 - )
Shot by Dennis Lo on the Apple Vision Pro and 360 cameras, this ongoing series of experimental video essay shorts explores the ways in which site-specific extended reality (XR) media -- virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) -- can be used to theorize, imagine, and embody post-humanist ways of inhabiting and touring places that subverts the underlying anthropocentrism of tech industrial discourses on "interface-less" spatial computing.
The Authorship of Place is the first monograph dedicated to the study of the politics, history, aesthetics, and practices of location shooting for Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, and coproduced art cinemas shot in rural communities since the late 1970s.
The book is now available to order on the University of Chicago Press, Amazon, and the HKU Press website.
Directed by Dennis Lo, this realist docudrama follows a long haul trucker’s journey over the road from California to Utah. Two years in the making and produced by a fifteen person team from Stanford University and the Bay area, Overloaded presents a provocative juxtaposition of the urban and rural deserts of the American West. Winner of the 2008 Best Cinematography Prize at the Stanford Student Festival.
lodh@jmu.edu | 540-568-1640