Remapping the Sinophone


Book Description

In a work that will force scholars to re-evaluate how they approach Sinophone studies, Wai-Siam Hee demonstrates that many of the major issues raised by contemporary Sinophone studies were already hotly debated in the popular culture surrounding Chinese-language films made in Singapore and Malaya during the Cold War. Despite the high political stakes, the feature films, propaganda films, newsreels, documentaries, newspaper articles, memoirs, and other published materials of the time dealt in sophisticated ways with issues some mistakenly believe are only modern concerns. In the process, the book offers an alternative history to the often taken-for-granted versions of film and national history that sanction anything relating to the Malayan Communist Party during the early period of independence in the region as anti-nationalist. Drawing exhaustively on material from Asian, European, and North American archives, the author unfolds the complexities produced by British colonialism and anti-communism, identity struggles of the Chinese Malayans, American anti-communism, and transnational Sinophone cultural interactions. Hee shows how Sinophone multilingualism and the role of the local, in addition to other theoretical problems, were both illustrated and practised in Cold War Sinophone cinema. Remapping the Sinophone: The Cultural Production of Chinese-Language Cinema in Singapore and Malaya before and during the Cold War deftly shows how contemporary Sinophone studies can only move forward by looking backwards. ‘Sound and refreshingly original. Remapping the Sinophone is an important book that will change the ways in which scholars tackle Sinophone studies, and it will exert profound influence on related scholarship published in both the Sinophone and the Anglophone world.’ —Shu-mei Shih, UCLA / The University of Hong Kong ‘Remapping the Sinophone offers a fresh perspective to Sinophone studies by mapping out the relevance of early Chinese-language cinema in Singapore and Malaya to the burgeoning field. Wai-Siam Hee’s examination of this lesser known cultural history in Southeast Asia through the critical lens of the Cold War is a necessary intervention to our understanding of Sinophone Cinema as a pluralistic form.’ —E. K. Tan, SUNY Stony Brook




Remapping Cold War Media


Book Description

Why were Hollywood producers eager to film on the other side of the Iron Curtain? How did Western computer games become popular in socialist Czechoslovakia's youth paramilitary clubs? What did Finnish commercial television hope to gain from broadcasting Soviet drama? Cold War media cultures are typically remembered in terms of an East-West binary, emphasizing conflict and propaganda. Remapping Cold War Media, however, offers a different perspective on the period, illuminating the extensive connections between media industries and cultures in Europe's Cold War East and their counterparts in the West and Global South. These connections were forged by pragmatic, technological, economic, political, and aesthetic forces; they had multiple, at times conflicting, functions and meanings. And they helped shape the ways in which media circulates today—from film festivals, to satellite networks, to coproductions. Considering film, literature, radio, photography, computer games, and television, Remapping Cold War Media offers a transnational history of postwar media that spans Eastern and Western Europe, the Nordic countries, Cuba, the United States, and beyond. Contributors draw on extensive archival research to reveal how media traveled across geopolitical boundaries; the processes of translation, interpretation, and reception on which these travels depended; and the significance of media form, content, industries, and infrastructures then and now.




The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas


Book Description

Balancing leading scholars with emerging trendsetters, this Companion offers fresh perspectives on Asian cinemas and charts new constellations in the field with significance far beyond Asian cinema studies. Asian cinema studies – at the intersection of film/media studies and area studies – has rapidly transformed under the impact of globalization, compounded by the resurgence of a variety of nationalist discourses as well as counter-discourses, new socio-political movements, and the possibilities afforded by digital media. Differentiated experiences of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have further heightened interest in the digital everyday and the renewed geopolitical divide between East and West, and between North and South. Thematized into six sections, the 46 chapters in this anthology address established paradigms of scholarship and viewership in Asian cinemas like extreme genres, cinephilia, festivals, and national cinema, while also highlighting political and archival concerns that firmly situate Asian cinemas within local and translocal milieus. Underrepresented cinemas of North Korea, Bangladesh, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Cambodia, appear here amidst a broader cross-regional, comparative approach. An ideal resource for film, media, cultural and Asian studies researchers, students, and scholars, as well as informed readers with an interest in Asian cinemas.




Remapping the Cold War in Asian Cinemas


Book Description

This book is about cinema and the cultural Cold War in Asia, set against the larger history of the cultural, political, and institutional linkages between the US, Europe, and Asia at the height of the Cold War. From the popularity of CIA-sponsored espionage films in Hong Kong and South Korea to the enduring Cold War rhetoric of brotherly relations in contemporary Sino-Indian co-production, cinema has always been a focal point of the cultural Cold War in Asia. Historically, both the United States and the Soviet Union viewed cinema as a powerful weapon in the battle to win hearts and minds--not just in Europe, but also in Asia. The Cold War in Asia was, properly speaking, a hot war, with proxy military confrontations between the United States, on one side, and the Soviet Union and China on the other. Amid this political and military turbulence, cataclysmic shifts occurred in the culture and history of Asian cinemas as well as in the latitude of US cultural diplomacy in Asia. The collection of essays in this volume sheds light on the often-forgotten history of the cultural Cold War in Asia. Taken together, the volume's sixteen chapters examine film cultures and industries in Asia to showcase the magnitude and depth of the Cold War's impact on Asian cinemas, societies, and politics. By shifting the lens to Asia, the contributors to this volume re-examine the dominant narratives about the global Cold War and highlight the complex and unique ways in which Asian societies negotiated, contested, and adapted to the politics and cultural manifestations of the Cold War.




The Cold War and Asian Cinemas


Book Description

This book offers an interdisciplinary, historically grounded study of Asian cinemas’ complex responses to the Cold War conflict. It situates the global ideological rivalry within regional and local political, social, and cultural processes, while offering a transnational and cross-regional focus. This volume makes a major contribution to constructing a cultural and popular cinema history of the global Cold War. Its geographical focus is set on East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. In adopting such an inclusive approach, it draws attention to the different manifestations and meanings of the connections between the Cold War and cinema across Asian borders. Many essays in the volume have a transnational and cross-regional focus, one that sheds light on Cold War-influenced networks (such as the circulation of socialist films across communist countries) and on the efforts of American agencies (such as the United States Information Service and the Asia Foundation) to establish a transregional infrastructure of "free cinema" to contain the communist influences in Asia. With its interdisciplinary orientation and broad geographical focus, the book will appeal to scholars and students from a wide variety of fields, including film studies, history (especially the burgeoning field of cultural Cold War studies), Asian studies, and US-Asian cultural relations.




Cinema and the Cultural Cold War


Book Description

Cinema and the Cultural Cold War explores the ways in which postwar Asian cinema was shaped by transnational collaborations and competitions between newly independent and colonial states at the height of Cold War politics. Sangjoon Lee adopts a simultaneously global and regional approach when analyzing the region's film cultures and industries. New economic conditions in the Asian region and shared postwar experiences among the early cinema entrepreneurs were influenced by Cold War politics, US cultural diplomacy, and intensified cultural flows during the 1950s and 1960s. By taking a closer look at the cultural realities of this tumultuous period, Lee comprehensively reconstructs Asian film history in light of the international relationships forged, broken, and re-established as the influence of the non-aligned movement grew across the Cold War. Lee elucidates how motion picture executives, creative personnel, policy makers, and intellectuals in East and Southeast Asia aspired to industrialize their Hollywood-inspired system in order to expand the market and raise the competitiveness of their cultural products. They did this by forming the Federation of Motion Picture Producers in Asia, co-hosting the Asian Film Festival, and co-producing films. Cinema and the Cultural Cold War demonstrates that the emergence of the first intensive postwar film producers' network in Asia was, in large part, the offspring of Cold War cultural politics and the product of American hegemony. Film festivals that took place in cities as diverse as Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur were annual showcases of cinematic talent as well as opportunities for the Central Intelligence Agency to establish and maintain cultural, political, and institutional linkages between the United States and Asia during the Cold War. Cinema and the Cultural Cold War reanimates this almost-forgotten history of cinema and the film industry in Asia.




Cinema and the Cultural Cold War


Book Description

Cinema and the Cultural Cold War explores the ways in which postwar Asian cinema was shaped by transnational collaborations and competitions between newly independent and colonial states at the height of Cold War politics. Sangjoon Lee adopts a simultaneously global and regional approach when analyzing the region's film cultures and industries. New economic conditions in the Asian region and shared postwar experiences among the early cinema entrepreneurs were influenced by Cold War politics, US cultural diplomacy, and intensified cultural flows during the 1950s and 1960s. By taking a closer look at the cultural realities of this tumultuous period, Lee comprehensively reconstructs Asian film history in light of the international relationships forged, broken, and re-established as the influence of the non-aligned movement grew across the Cold War. Lee elucidates how motion picture executives, creative personnel, policy makers, and intellectuals in East and Southeast Asia aspired to industrialize their Hollywood-inspired system in order to expand the market and raise the competitiveness of their cultural products. They did this by forming the Federation of Motion Picture Producers in Asia, co-hosting the Asian Film Festival, and co-producing films. Cinema and the Cultural Cold War demonstrates that the emergence of the first intensive postwar film producers' network in Asia was, in large part, the offspring of Cold War cultural politics and the product of American hegemony. Film festivals that took place in cities as diverse as Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur were annual showcases of cinematic talent as well as opportunities for the Central Intelligence Agency to establish and maintain cultural, political, and institutional linkages between the United States and Asia during the Cold War. Cinema and the Cultural Cold War reanimates this almost-forgotten history of cinema and the film industry in Asia.




Rediscovering Korean Cinema


Book Description

South Korean cinema is a striking example of non-Western contemporary cinematic success. Thanks to the increasing numbers of moviegoers and domestic films produced, South Korea has become one of the world’s major film markets. In 2001, the South Korean film industry became the first in recent history to reclaim its domestic market from Hollywood and continues to maintain around a 50 percent market share today. High-quality South Korean films are increasingly entering global film markets and connecting with international audiences in commercial cinemas and art theatres, and at major international film festivals. Despite this growing recognition of the films themselves, Korean cinema’s rich heritage has not heretofore received significant scholarly attention in English-language publications. This groundbreaking collection of thirty-five essays by a wide range of academic specialists situates current scholarship on Korean cinema within the ongoing theoretical debates in contemporary global film studies. Chapters explore key films of Korean cinema, from Sweet Dream, Madame Freedom, The Housemaid, and The March of Fools to Oldboy, The Host, and Train to Busan, as well as major directors such as Shin Sang-ok, Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, Bong Joon-ho, Hong Sang-soo, Park Chan-wook, and Lee Chang-dong. While the chapters provide in-depth analyses of particular films, together they cohere into a detailed and multidimensional presentation of Korean cinema’s cumulative history and broader significance. With its historical and critical scope, abundance of new research, and detailed discussion of important individual films, Rediscovering Korean Cinema is at once an accessible classroom text and a deeply informative compendium for scholars of Korean and East Asian studies, cinema and media studies, and communications. It will also be an essential resource for film industry professionals and anyone interested in international cinema.




Chinese Cinema


Book Description

In Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization, a variety of scholars explore the history, aesthetics, and politics of Chinese cinema as the Chinese film industry grapples with its place as the second largest film industry in the world. Exploring the various ways that Chinese cinema engages with global politics, market forces, and film cultures, this edited volume places Chinese cinema against an array of contexts informing the contours of Chinese cinema today. The book also demonstrates that Chinese cinema in the global context is informed by the intersections and tensions found in Chinese and world politics, national and international co-productions, the local and global in representing Chineseness, and the lived experiences of social and political movements versus screened politics in Chinese film culture. This work is a pioneer investigation of the topic and will inspire future research by other scholars of film studies. “This edited volume offers a much-needed account of alternative ways of envisioning Chinese cinema in the special context of China and the world. Its vigorous theoretical framework, which puts emphasis on interactions in the context of China and the world, will complement and update publications in related areas.” —Yiu-Wai Chu, The University of Hong Kong; author of Main Melody Films: Hong Kong Directors in Mainland China “Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization offers a collection of studies of modern Chinese films and their global connections, with a contemporary emphasis. Its authors’ insightful analyses of films—famous, obscure, and new to the twenty-first-century screen—elucidate numerous contextual factors relevant for understanding the history and aesthetics of Chinese cinemas.” —Christopher Rea, The University of British Columbia; author of Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949




Surveillance in Asian Cinema


Book Description

Critical theory and popular wisdom are rife with images of surveillance as an intrusive, repressive practice often suggestively attributed to eastern powers and opposed to western liberalism. Hollywood-dominated global media has long promulgated a geopoliticized east-west axis of freedom vs. control. This book focuses on Asian and Asia-based films and cinematic traditions obscured by lopsided western hegemonic discourse and—more specifically—probes these films’ treatments of a phenomenon that western film often portrays with neo-orientalist hysteria. Exploring recent and historical movies made in post-social and anti-Communist societies such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Korea, the book picks up on the political and economic concerns implicitly underlying Sinophobic and anti-Communist Asian images in Hollywood films while also considering how these societies and states depict the issues of centralization, militarization and technological innovation so often figured as distinctive of the difference between eastern despotism and western liberalism.