Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism (review)

Abstract

Anyone who has recently taught an Asian American Studies class recognizes the need for scholarship on the rapidly growing number of films and videos by Asian Americans. In response to this need, Darrell Y. Hamamoto and Sandra Liu have compiled Countervisions, a sophisticated, innovative, and engaging collection. Asian American film criticism from its inception in 1960s and 1970s counterculture has had a political engagement that has honed its analytical edge. As editor Hamamoto suggests, "in the main, Asian American film criticism has avoided the excesses of psychoanalytic abstractions and theoreticism while holding to the primacy and determinate force of history and politics in explaining and [End Page 78] understanding the impact of racial inequality on minority communities" (3). This is not to say that this volume is light on theory. Essays in the collection employ current approaches to analyzing filmmaking practices and reception in a broad range of examples from independent and mainstream venues.