张真是美国纽约大学电影学副教授。上世纪80年代初她在复旦大学攻读新闻专业，随后赴瑞典学习电影制作和电影理论。1991年获得爱荷华州立大学比较文学硕士，1998年在芝加哥大学获得东亚研究/电影研究的博士学位。在斯坦福大学从事了一年博士后研究后，她进入纽约大学执教。她的论文曾获得电影和媒介研究协会的最佳学位论文奖，本书即以此发展而来。

《银幕艳史》2005年由芝加哥大学出版社出版，除此之外，张真还使用多种语言（英文、瑞典文、意大利文、法文和中文）在各类权威学术刊物和论文集上发表大量文章，内容涉及中国电影、文学、大众文化和性别研究等多个领域。她所选编的《城市一代：中国电影和文化21世纪的转向》一书，2006年将由杜克大学出版社出版。张真还曾参与组织过纽约现代艺术博物馆和林肯中心以彰显表演艺术为主题的大型中国电影精品回顾。

Shanghai in the early twentieth century was alive with art and culture. With the proliferation of popular genres such as the martial arts film, the contest among various modernist filmmakers, and the advent of sound, Chinese cinema was transforming urban life. But with the Japanese invasion in 1937, all of this came to a screeching halt. Until recently, the political establishment has discouraged comprehensive studies of the cultural phenomenon of early Chinese film, and this momentous chapter in China's history has remained largely unexamined. The first sustained historical study of the emergence of cinema in China, "An Amorous History of the Silver Screen" is a fascinating narrative that illustrates the immense cultural significance of film and its power as a vehicle for social change. Named after a major feature film on the making of Chinese cinema, only part of which survives, "An Amorous History of the Silver Screen" reveals the intricacies of this cultural movement and explores its connections to other art forms such as photography, architecture, drama, and literature. In light of original archival research, Zhang Zhen examines previously unstudied films and expands the important discussion of how they modeled modern social structures and gender roles in early twentieth-century China. The first volume in the new and groundbreaking series "Cinema and Modernity", "An Amorous History of the Silver Screen" is an innovative - and well illustrated - look at the cultural history of Chinese modernity through the lens of this seminal moment in Shanghai cinema.