Introduction: Women in East Asian Cinema: Gender Representations, Creative Labour and Global Histories

Abstract

This introductory chapter positions the project of the book within the critical debates which have informed the study of women in film since the early academic interventions into the topic, noting particularly the moves across and between studies of representation, production, circulation and canonisation. Noting the tendency for anglophone scholarship to focus on American and European contexts, this chapter then discusses those scholars whose work has begun to helpfully redress the legacies of Eurocentric, male-focused scholarship and cultivate a space in the literature for more complete studies of women working in East Asian film industries. This introduction speaks to the rationale for this volume: to highlight understudied areas of women’s contributions to cinema and to re-direct women’s film history towards a global ‘film history’ more broadly, through a case-study focus on the cinema of East Asia, its diaspora and its spheres of influence. While critical debates continue in many socio-cultural fields on this subject, the focus of this volume remains on the issues of cinema and representation, both on- and off-screen, and particularly on historical absences and historiographical interventions in both the representation of women in East Asian cinema, and/or East Asian women in cinema.