Asian Cinema Research Articles

탈냉전기 한국에서의 ‘동아시아 영화 연구’ 동향

East Asian films began to become the subject of academic research in Korea around 1990 when the transition to the post-Cold War took place. This article is intended to investigate, classify, and comment on East Asian film researches’ trends in post-Cold War Korea. The scope of the study is limited to researches dealing with the relationships between Korean, Chinese and Japanese films. These researches can be named East Asian Film Studies(EAFS).BR After several academic projects dealing with East Asian Films in the mid-2000s, EAFS has submitted various issues and achievements as an interdisciplinary area that has been composed of film studies, Korean studies, Chinese studies, Japanese studies, and cultural studies. It can be largely characterized by two methodologies. One is a comparative film studise, and the other is to explore diverse aspects of relations-impact, overlap, adjacent, and transition.BR These were applied to various aspects of cinematic practices in East Asia with consideration of the social context. It can be classified according to the period when films to be studied are placed: colonial period(-1945), the Cold War period(1945-1991), and the post-Cold War period(1991-).BR Researches on East Asian films during the colonial period mainly focused on the transnational situation that colonialism and World Wars paradoxically opened. Researches on Cold War films focused on the situation of obstruction due to ideological blockade and the inter/transnational flows that nevertheless worked. Specifically, policies, industries, and genres were compared by the nations, and the inter-Asian acceptance, reproduction, and impact of films were analyzed. BR Researches on post-Cold War films noted aspects of various cinematic relationships in East Asia, which have been increasing. Comparative studies have been conducted on historical representations and major film makers. Mutual representation and acceptance of East Asian films, dynamics of the East Asian international film festivals, and the possibility of Asian film markets for Hanryu were also discussed. Criticism of the dynamics of capital, which drives the proliferation of cinematic flows in East Asia, and reflection on the structure of a nation-state that still works strongly were also accompanied.BR EAFS has imagined ‘Cinematic East Asia’ as a ‘field of highly connected experiences through films’. Its sharp criticism of the status quo gives itself the nature of the ‘East Asian Alternative System Theory’. The geopolitical tension in East Asia, which has increased since the mid-2010s, paradoxically strengthens the effectiveness of EAFS, because its ability as anti-geopolitical practices is being requested.

Cultural Global Hegemony and Globalization: Hollywood’s LGBTQ+ Impacts in Asian Film Industry

t is indisputable that globalization provides a vast space for various aspects of the world to continue developing and connecting. Through this, culture, as one of the aspects most affected by the times and technological advances, is the main focus of hegemonic companies such as Hollywood to expand their work, especially in cinema. This paper attempts to explain the impact of globalization on cultural hegemony in Asian countries due to the widespread influence of the film industry from Hollywood, especially the LGBTQ+ genre. The film industry in Asia has undergone many transformations over time since the impact of Hollywood's hegemony. Asia itself is a country that carries a very different culture from Western culture. This paper then explains this phenomenon using a qualitative research method based on observation of case studies per country, such as Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia. Through this method, this paper has concluded how the influence of American Culture through its film industry as a form of dominant culture has affected the film industry in Asia (Japan, Korea, and Indonesia). Thus, providing arguments of similarities in the elements of LGBTQ+ by films produced by Hollywood and the film industry in Asia.

Diasporic Identities and their Representation through Cinema: An Analysis of Diasporic Film through South Asian Cinemas

Diasporic Identities and their Representation through Cinema: An Analysis of Diasporic Film through South Asian Cinemas

A voice for elephants: Kirsten Tan’s Pop Aye and environmental dialogue in Southeast Asia

One of cinema’s foundational films, Thomas Edison’s 60-second actuality film Electrocuting an Elephant (1903) documents the tragic circumstances surrounding the first appearance of an elephant on screen. As the title makes explicit, the film records the killing of an Asian elephant named Topsy, a circus performer, in front of a small crowd at Coney Island. Topsy was fed poisoned carrots, electrocuted and strangled, with the electrocution ultimately killing her.1 The film was used to demonstrate the power of electricity, a new invention at the time, and was initially played on the Edison kinetoscopes. The ‘shock’ of the film, as Lesley Stern has described, functions like an electrical charge transferred to the body of the spectator, decentring human perception and knowledge.2 This early inscription of the human/animal/cinema interface has been reprised in contemporary Southeast Asian cinema to explore more recent human activities in the Anthropocene. Kirsten Tan’s Singapore-Thailand...

Speaking Nations, Edge Ways - Reviews of 'Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound and Stability' by Gerald Sim, Amsterdam University Press, 2020; and 'Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945 – 1998)' edited by Gaik Cheng Khoo, Thomas Barker, and Mary Ainslie, Amsterdam University Press, 2020

Speaking Nations, Edge Ways - Reviews of 'Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound and Stability' by Gerald Sim, Amsterdam University Press, 2020; and 'Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945 – 1998)' edited by Gaik Cheng Khoo, Thomas Barker, and Mary Ainslie, Amsterdam University Press, 2020

Cinematic animism and contemporary Southeast Asian artists’ moving-image practices

The concept of the Capitalocene is, I believe, especially relevant for contextualizing how contemporary Southeast Asian film and artists’ moving-image practices respond, allude or relate to climate and ecological change. As the introduction to this dossier suggests, the Capitalocene draws attention to the relationship between climate change, the long history of the region’s colonization by western powers, and the continuing structural dynamic of coloniality.1 Within this regional context, coloniality signals the structural continuity of regimes and practices of capitalist extraction and necropolitics, thereby connecting the long history of colonization to the aftermath of official national independence. Various post-independence forms of disaster-capitalist regimes in the region are underpinned by political systems of authoritarianism and impunity, whose foundational institutions, mechanisms and ideologies – such as developmentalism, patriarchy, racialization and racial hierarchy – are traceable to the longue durée and legacies of colonization.2 Instead of resorting to the generalizing language of...

Tracing the Anthropocene in Southeast Asian film and artists’ moving image

Tracing the Anthropocene in Southeast Asian film and artists’ moving image

The transformation of ‘divisive’ daughters-in-law in Central Asian cinema

ABSTRACT The article explores the transformation of images of daughters-in-law in Central Asian cinema of the Soviet and post-Soviet era. The images of daughters-in-law (kelin) are laden with cultural, social and political meanings that reveal various aspects of identity and gender politics and state ideology in the Central Asian states. The kelins are seen as important symbols of the continuation of patriarchal traditions, yet they also belong to societies where debates on gender roles are becoming increasingly more pronounced. The representations of the daughter-in-law in Central Asian film, thus, has become a contested site showcasing various ideological perspectives, from discourses of female re-traditionalisation to their critique and debate.

BOOK REVIEW: Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability, by Gerald Sim

SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthropology, sociology, and history.

Review: Struggles for Recognition: Melodrama and Visibility in Latin American Silent Film, by Juan Sebastián Ospina León

Book Review| December 01 2021 Review: Struggles for Recognition: Melodrama and Visibility in Latin American Silent Film, by Juan Sebastián Ospina León Struggles for Recognition: Melodrama and Visibility in Latin American Silent Film, by Juan Sebastián Ospina León Koel Banerjee Koel Banerjee KOEL BANERJEE is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on South Asian cinema, transnational melodrama, and consumer culture. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Cultural Critique, Studies in South Asian Film and Media, and Screen (forthcoming), and in edited anthologies, including Third Cinema, World Cinema and Marxism; The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Film (forthcoming); and Bollywood’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation, and Contested Bodies. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Juan Sebastián Ospina León, Struggles for Recognition: Melodrama and Visibility in Latin American Silent Film. University of California Press, 2021. $85 hardcover; $34.95 paper; $ 34.95 e-book. 266 pages. Film Quarterly (2021) 75 (2): 117–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2021.75.2.117 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Koel Banerjee; Review: Struggles for Recognition: Melodrama and Visibility in Latin American Silent Film, by Juan Sebastián Ospina León. Film Quarterly 1 December 2021; 75 (2): 117–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2021.75.2.117 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentFilm Quarterly Search You do not currently have access to this content.

Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability by Gerald Sim (review)

Reviewed by: Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability by Gerald Sim Nadine Chan Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability. By Gerald Sim. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 254 pp. ISBN 9048551161. Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema begins with the premise that not every postcolonial society harbours a relationship of antagonism or disavowal for its colonial past. The author recounts a remark that a taxi driver in George Town, Malaysia, once made to two of the author's British colleagues. After pointing out that Malaysia was once a Crown colony, the cab driver assuaged them of their guilt by saying 'Oh don't worry. […] You [the British] were not as bad as the Japanese.' (p. 23) This is one of the examples that Sim uses to introduce us to the phenomenon of 'postcolonial nostalgia' (p. 24)—a bizarre condition (or affliction?) 'of unconflicted warmth with which some independent Southeast Asian countries remember colonialism' (p. 25). Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema takes issue with what the author understands to be postcolonial theory's fixation on a politics of resistance. Instead, and contentiously, Sim calls for a new framework for the cinemas of formerly colonized Southeast Asian nations that makes room for ambivalence, and even nostalgia, around colonized pasts. This book, in the author's words, is meant to be read as 'a supplementary and corrective effort to vary and renew postcolonial film studies' (p. 33). Sim explores how the psychic, spatial, and political resonances of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia's colonialization extends into the cinemas of recent decades and articulates with the emergent pressures of global capitalism. The poetics of 'space', 'sound', and 'stability' are the three key ideas around which Sim structures the book—and they are indeed rich and appropriate frameworks. Each of the four chapters showcases Sim's conceptual interventions via illuminating analysis, an extensive filmography, and gripping writing. Despite what the title may suggest, the book's chapters focus on a few countries within maritime Southeast Asia, namely Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Chapters 1 and 2 look at Singapore film from the Golden Age to the New Wave. In Chapter 1, 'Postcolonial Spatiality', aerial cartography, affective maps, colonial atlases, and their topographical imaginaries trace a fascinating postcolonial poetics of space, power, and history through Singapore film. Chapter 2, 'Reorienting Film History Spatially' extends Sim's generative ideas around postcolonial spatial epistemology to consider a politics of ambivalence and uncertainty in Tan Pin Pin's films which he reads as a symptom of the manufactured 'ahistoricality' of Singapore's late capitalist identity. Chapter 3, 'Postcolonial Cacophonies: Malaysia Senses the World' takes on the soundscape of Yasmin Ahmad's Orked trilogy as telling of Malaysia's postcolonial-global nexus. Chapter 4, 'Postcolonial Myths: Indonesia Americanizes Stability', looks at the psychic resonances of the reformasi era through the fiction of predictability in what the author identifies as the country's 'genre-dominated' cinema. Each of these chapters, particularly Chapter 1, offer thought-provoking analysis that couple critical theory with an intimate appreciation for cinema in the region that comes across clearly in the writing. Left slightly wanting in the introduction however is a stronger explication of how these poetics of 'space', 'sound', and 'stability' offer us a theoretical framework [End Page 224] that fulfils the author's promise for a renewed framework for postcolonial cinema in any definitive way. The book's critique of postcolonial criticism, while well taken, does appear somewhat unforgiving toward a field that has since evolved beyond the polarizing politics of the likes of Solanas and Gettino's 'Third Cinema' (which the author cites as a point of departure). Recent thinking in the larger field of empire/imperial studies has entwined the politics of late capitalism, globalization, and neoliberalism in ways that the author, building on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire, seems not to give sufficient credit. Surely it is of little debate that the pressures of our global neoliberal present are extensions of, rather than ruptures from, colonial pasts. Relatedly, certain important premises of the book leave room for doubt; for example, the statement that the sovereignties of Malaysia and...

Between aunties: sexual futures and queer South Asian aunty porn

ABSTRACT The aunty appears as a common vernacular figure in South Asian film, television, memes, novels, and porn. ‘Aunty porn’ names a large body of pornography that features fat, older, South Asian women; this genre is unique in that it features aunties as protagonists. In other media, aunties are only afforded minor roles as difficult, stubborn, and traditional, and this archetype positions them as an antagonist to queer sexual futures. This article scavenges a selection of queer aunty porn from South Asian diasporic novels to demonstrate aunties’ capacity to cultivate sexual futures, showing how sex between aunties exists in continuum with archetypal aunty attributes like cooking and gossip. While aunty sexualities are usually interpreted in relation to younger generations, this article points to the many ways that ageing South Asian women rehearse queer sexual futures for and between themselves.

Thinking, Feeling and Experiencing the “Empty Shot” in Cinema

This article introduces the unique Asian film technique of the “empty shot” ( kong jingtou 空镜头) from the perspective of Chinese philosophical thought and aesthetics. In Chinese cinema, the “empty shot” is understood as a shot comprised of nonhuman subjects, distinct from both the establishing shot and the cutaway. Perhaps due to the lack of understanding of its philosophical grounding, the “empty shot” has not received much attention in Anglophone film studies, and has been criticized as an overgeneralised concept. This article first relates the “empty shot” to the more widely accepted “pillow shot” in Anglophone studies of Japanese cinema. This article aims to make visible a non-anthropocentric worldview conveyed through the “empty shot”, and to make space for the potentialities of this film device, which may also be found in non-Chinese cinemas. It explains the “empty shot”’s central features: firstly, its visible scenes are imbued with invisible emotion, leaving space for the audience to feel what the characters are feeling. Second, it facilitates the generation of qi or “air” in a film, indicating the circulation of qi in a process of dynamic transformation between “actual” and “virtual”. Thirdly, the “empty shot” communicates with the audience, allowing them to more fully experience natural scenery and to encounter other beings while suspending everyday experiences, existing biases, and the separation between self and other.

Introduction

Abstract This special issue engages the historical and contemporary heterogeneity of the Gulf, which was a transcultural space long before the discovery of oil. Over the past two decades, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have actively begun to harness the media’s power, while at the same time grassroots productions—online, through social media and in regional festivals—reframe assumptions about film and visual media. With resident expatriate population comprising up to 90 percent of the population in Gulf states, film and visual media complicate conventional frameworks derived from area studies, such as ‘Arab media’, ‘Middle Eastern and North African cinema’, or ‘South Asian film’. These articles also unsettle the modernist divisions of media into distinct categories, such as broadcast television and theatrical exhibition, and consider forms that move between professional and nonprofessional media, and between private and semi-public spaces, including the transmedia spaces of theme parks and shooting locations. Articles examine the subjects of early photography in Kuwait, the role of Oman TV as a broadcaster of Indian films into Pakistan, representations of disability and gender in Kuwaiti musalsalat, tribal uses of social media, and videos produced by South Asian and Southeast Asian expatriates, including second-generation expatriates.

Smakowanie filmu. Kulinarna promocja filmu jako paratekst w kontekście badań nad międzynarodową recepcją kina azjatyckiego

The proposed article revolves around broadening the definition of a paratext in the context of culinary promotion, presentation and analysis of the chosen Asian cinema festivals. Starting from theoretical and definitional issues, the authors define how culinary recipes appear in film art, outlining their roles, types, or structures. Furthermore, the reader has the opportunity to learn about the culinary paratexts accompanying the “Five Flavors” Asian Film Festival and the New York Asian Film Festival Winter Showcase in 2020. The article’s main goal was complemented by the elements of the historical links between culinary and cinema in Asia. The authors’ attention was also drawn by the international reception of food and film pairing. An essential point of reference for the authors is the transnational nature of culinary paratexts and the somatic character of the stimuli accompanying the shows.

The Black Film Ambassador

In celebration of the Pacific Film Archive at 50, Josslyn Luckett, a former student of PFA programmer and UCBerkeley professor Albert Johnson reflects on the global reach of his career and legacy. One of the founding “co-conspirators” of Film Quarterly, Johnson presented African, Asian, and Latin American cinema at the PFA for three decades, while programming U.S. directors from Vincente Minnelli to Melvin Van Peebles across the globe. While Johnson became known for his iconic “Craft of Cinema” profile series at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), this article highlights under-acknowledged aspects of his film curation and writing, including his early championing of many of the independent Black directors known now as the L.A. Rebellion.

Negotiating ‘Asianness’ at the Tokyo International Film Festival Local, Regional and International Dynamics Through Programming Practices and Film Markets

In this paper I will trace a brief history of major Asian film festivals to understand how the notion of ‘Asianness’ evolved over time and how it is expressed nowadays through programming practices and film markets. Then I will focus on the case study of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) as a problematic site where cultural and economic dynamics converge. As an A-category festival, TIFF has to balance its international status with regional relevance, negotiating ‘Asianness’ in a complex relationship involving the local film industry, since questions on ‘Asian cinema’ are deeply linked to the national. Finally, I will draw some conclusions, discussing how TIFF relates to other major film festivals in Asia, where ‘Asianness’ has been used as a shared effort to distinguish themselves from the paradigm set by European film festivals. However, this is an ongoing process, TIFF struggles to use ‘Asianness’ as a unifying element and the specific interests of each festival obstruct the possibility to create a more systematic trans-Asian model.

Review: Olivia Khoo, Asian Cinema: A Regional View

Review: Olivia Khoo, Asian Cinema: A Regional View

Role of pivot translations in Asian film festivals in Catalonia

Pivot translations are very often used in film festivals, but have been granted little consideration from an academic viewpoint. This article analyses the role of pivot languages in audiovisual translation within the framework of Asian film festivals held in Catalonia. There are three aims of this paper: (i) to examine to what extent pivot translations are part of the translation process in films screened in such festivals, (ii) to determine the justifications for their use, and (iii) to analyse the effects of their use from a qualitative perspective. In order to do so, the answers from a questionnaire distributed among the most relevant agents in Asian film festivals in Catalonia will be analysed. Additionally, the Chinese film Old Stone by Johnny Ma that has been translated into and subtitled in Catalan through English as its pivot language, will be presented as a case study. Lay abstract The use of a third language or pivot translation is widespread in film festivals, although very few studies focus on this practice, which usually remains unnoticed by the average spectator. This article seeks to examine just how common this phenomenon is in film festivals and to analyse its impact with a case study, taking the Chinese film Old Stone by Johnny Ma and its translation into Catalan as an example. More precisely, the article aims to answer two questions regarding the use of pivot languages in audiovisual translation. Firstly, to what extent and for what exact purpose are pivot translations currently being used in Asian film festivals in Catalonia? Secondly, how does using a pivot language, in our case English, affect quality?

Dissent as responsibility: Manfred Durniok’s Central European coproductions Mephisto (1981), Taken for a Ride (1983) and Colonel Redl (1985)

West German producer Manfred Durniok (1934–2003) played a crucial role in channelling the work of critical filmmakers from East to West. Straddling the Iron Curtain, Durniok financed international coproductions, imported Central European and Asian films into the West, and facilitated the festival exhibit of politically critical films. This article traces Durniok’s cultural mediation between the West and state-run film studios such as DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft, 1946–1992, East Germany) and Mafilm (1911-present, Hungary). His business model with such studios allowed Durniok to realise critical films via coproduction that would otherwise have been unthinkable within the constraints of socialist national cinemas. Durniok shared an understanding of ‘dissent as responsibility’ (Václav Havel) with two directors with whom he worked closely: Hungarian István Szabó (1938) and East German Frank Beyer (1932–2006). Durniok produced two of Szabó’s pictures that brought the Hungarian director’s acclaim in the West and propelled his international career: Mephisto (1981) and Colonel Redl (1985). Similarly, in 1982, Durniok sponsored Beyer’s road movie Bockshorn (Taken for a Ride, 1983) that enabled the director’s breakthrough in the West and his career in television post-1989. Durniok not only financed these East-West coproductions in the 1980s, but also contributed to a form of cultural mediation that responded to artists’ need to voice their political dissent in film.