The Origins of Asian Film Studies: Seven Pioneers’ Recollections

Abstract

As we commence our celebratory conference marking a century of Chinese cinema, it is worth noting that Asian film as a field of study has existed about half that time. Although a number of journalistic accounts appeared throughout the early 20th Century, it was in the 1950s that a sub-discipline began to coalesce around the research and writing of some scholars, archivists, and journalists, individuals such as Cheng Jihua, Li Shaobai, Donald Richie, Joe Anderson, Régis Bergeron, Jay Leyda, Erik Barnouw, and S. Krishnaswamy. Except for Leyda and Krishnaswamy, all of these pioneers have shared their recollections of the early days of Asian film scholarship through interviews and memoirs published in Asian Cinema . It is from these articles, and Leyda’s foreword to his book Dianying , that this attempt to reconstruct an early history is based.