A split is emerging within posthumanism between techno-optimists such as transhumanists, who tend to see technology as the cure for all ills, and environmental-animal-studies communities, who often downplay or disregard technology. This essay aspires to find a middle ground that, while deeply cognizant of technologies such as artificial intelligence and life extension, also leaves room for responsible critique and evaluation. The posthuman theories of Cary Wolfe and Rosi Braidotti are juxtaposed with two films by Alex Garland, Ex Machina and Annihilation, which implicitly illustrate why the theories of Wolfe and Braidotti fail to offer resources adequate to a posthuman future. In Ex Machina, the emergence of a conscious artificial being outstrips the boundaries that systems theory (as articulated by Luhmann and applied by Wolfe) attempts to impose on how complexity develops. In Annihilation, an alien presence enters earth’s ecosystems and wreaks havoc with earth’s evolutionary history, “refracting” the DNA of plants, animals and humans and creating impossible hybrids and distorted doubles. The film shows that the boundaries that Braidotti seeks to impose on how far the postman can go are ripped through by the alien presence, suggesting that when a fully posthuman entity emerges, it will not be able to be constrained or contained by human limits.The essay concludes with a list of the attributes that an affirmative posthumanism must have to be up to the challenges humans face in the contemporary era.

The film philosophy from the second half of the 20th century to the present has undergone three important transformations: psychoanalysis, Deleuze’s vitalism and posthumanism. But in this leading clue, the position of subjectivity is always an unsolved doubt and difficulty. In Deleuze’s theory of affect, the subject is the surface effect generated by the flow of images. When it comes to posthumanism and accelerationism, subjectivity even becomes an outdated position. Therefore, we try to reintroduce phenomenology, which is often neglected. In Sobchack’s case, the mutual belonging and analogy between the human body and the film’s body is the main idea, but it still implies the possibility of rupture. When it comes to Laura Marks, the haptic surface further extends the position of “dying image”, which maintains subjectivity on the edge of rupture. These speculations, which have been gradually forgotten, just enlighten us on how to face the disconnection thesis of posthumanism and reconstruct the real position of subjectivity.

This article investigates the distribution and consumption of Way Down East (directed by D. W. Griffith, 1920) in Chinese cities in the 1920s in an attempt to explore the impact of foreign films on early Chinese filmmaking in particular and Chinese society in general. Way Down East highlights a young woman’s trials and tribulations caused by male tyranny and deception. Such melodrama films by D. W. Griffith struck a chord in China in the 1920s, when the concerns of women and the loss of family values after the May Fourth movement found expression in film. Ideologically, the embracing of Way Down East in China, particularly among progressive intellectuals, testifies to an anti-May Fourth conservatism. Chinese intellectuals were inspired by Way Down East to deny Chinese women’s subjectivity as new women who could control their own destinies. Technically, the popularity of D. W. Griffith’s films in China gave rise to the prevalence of cinematic melodrama in 1920s China.

The Gold Lion Award Winning Film Still Life, reflects humanism solicitude to the inferior society with a realistic approach, which is a consistent theme in Jia Zhangke’s films; meanwhile, this film also adopts a surrealistic way to present itself. The paper analyzes the way the director combines these two seemingly opposite expressing techniques through an in-depth interpretation of film symbols, and analyzes the way the film reflects the events and people of China under great changes. The film is a record of these changes, while also an inquiry of the results of these changes.