John Berra

 Lead writer John Berra is a lecturer in Film Studies at Nanjing University, where he teaches courses on American Independent Cinema, Contemporary Hollywood and Genre, Japanese Cinema, and the Cinematic City. He is the author of Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partiality of Independent Production (2008); editor of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent (2010/2012); editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Japan (2010, 2012); and co-editor of World Film Locations: Beijing (2012). John has contributed essays to The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology (2011), The Companion to Film Noir (2013) and Ozu and Evolution: Reassessing an Icon of Japanese Cinema (2013). He has also contributed articles to Asian Cinema, Film International, and Science Fiction Film and Television. John has provided essays for the Madman DVD releases of 7 Films by Ozu Yasujiro (2010) and An Actor’s Revenge (2010). As a guest speaker, he has discussed Japanese cinema at Nippon Connection and the Japan Society. Recent activities have included subtitling The Love Songs of Tie dan’er (2012, the second independent feature by the Chinese director Hao Jie, and co-programming a retrospective of contemporary Chinese cinema at Nanjing International School. When he is not otherwise engaged, John Berra is listening to the VCinema podcast on which he also occasionally appears as a guest host. John’s reviews for VCinema and other websites are regularly translated into Chinese by his wife MengYan and re-posted at his Sina Blog.

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