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 every day and the renewed geopolitical divide between “East” and “West,” “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.
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.
Introduction: Trans-Asian Cinemas at Home in the World Zhen Zhang,
Sangjoon Lee, Debashree Mukherjee and Intan Paramaditha SECTION I:
Cine-activism & Feminist Aesthetics Introduction Zhen Zhang
1. Film Societies
and the Screen within the Crowd in Bangladesh Lotte Hoek
2. Genres of
Ecofeminism: Women Filmmakers in India and the Environment Sangita Gopal
3.
Rewriting History, Changing the Story: An Interview with Anocha
Suwichakornpong Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn
4. Riding the Waves: An Interview
with Yim Soon-Rye Shin Chi-yun
5. Through the Lens of South Korean
Cine-feminism: House of Hummingbird (2018) and Moving On (2020) Hyun Seon
Park
6. Transnational Womens Cinema in Southeast Asia: The Case of Marlina
The Murderer in Four Acts Intan Paramaditha
7. Taiwan Queer Cinema, Marriage
Equality, and Homo(trans)nationalism Shi-yan Chao
8. Love In Pacific Time:
Asian Screen Culture in Vancouver Helen Leung SECTION II: Mediating Colonial,
National and Trans-Asian Imaginaries Introduction Debashree Mukherjee
9.
What Is Asian Cinema in Japan? Film and Political Economy in the 1940s
Daisuke Miyao
10. Filming Taiwan Between a Quest for Artistic Purity and
Propaganda in the People's Republic of China: The Case of Taiwan Wangshi (My
Bittersweet Taiwan, 2004) Zhuoyi Wang
11. In the Name of Love: Screen
Representations of Taiwanese Indigenous People (1920s-1940s) Ting-wu Cho
12.
Desiring Nanyang, Nation, and Home: Fictions of Belonging in Two Rediscovered
Post-war Films from Singapore Elizabeth Wijaya
13. Where is Shangri-La?
Imagining Kathmandu in Film Dikshya Karki
14. Affective-Scap/ing in Zhang
Lu's Inter-Asian Quartet Ma Ran
15. Postcards from Russia: Left Discourse and
Telugu Cinema C. Yamini Krishna SECTION III: Trans-border Industrial
Cultures: Imagined Audiences and Diasporic Dreams Introduction Debashree
Mukherjee
16. Media Topographies of East Asia: Cinema, Cables, Wirelessness
and the (Somewhat) Material Imaginaries of Territory Alexander Zahlten
17.
Looking Out and On the Move: Aesthetics of Infrastructure in Recent Singapore
Cinema Gerald Sim
18. North Koreas International Co-production Ventures:
Nation and the Post-national Hyanjin Lee
19. Trans-Asian Circuits of Cinema
and Media Exchange Between Australia and Asia Olivia Khoo
20. Global Stories,
Local Audiences: Dubbing Netflix in India Tejaswini Ganti
21. Webtoon-based
Korean Films on Netflix: Shifting Media Ecology in the Digital Platform Era
Dal Yong Jin
22. Exile at the Edges: Donald Richie at the Pinch Point between
Japan and the World Markus Nornes
23. Trans-Pacific Connection and Cine
Nikkei in Peru: A Conversation Jimena Mora and Talia Vidal with Zhen Zhang
SECTION IV: Beyond Genre: Modes, Motifs, Memories Introduction Intan
Paramaditha
24. The Melodramatic Mode in Asian Cinema: Usmar Ismails Lewat
Djam Malam (After the Curfew) Stephen Teo
25. Bong Joon-hos Parasite as a
Remake of Kim Ki-youngs The Housemaid: Creating an Aesthetic Genealogy
within South Korean Cinema Christina Klein
26. Melting the Iron Curtain:
Metal-morphosis and the Caricatured Western Leaders in Agitprop Animation in
Socialist China, 1949-1965 Daisy Yan Du
27. The Mirrored Cultural
Revolution The Geo-political Making of Apolitical Hero in Chang Chehs The
Assassin Raymond Tsang
28. Listening to Small-Gauge Stories: Sonic Memories
and Sensory Histories in Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong
Weerasethakul, 2000) and Big Boy (Shireen Seno, 2011) Philippa Lovatt
29.
Global Aspirations/ Local Affilations: Exploring the tensions of
Post-Crisis Thai Cinema, 1997-2004 Rachel Harrison
30. Revisiting the Face
Veil in Post-Pandemic Times: The Fhyun Humane Visual Ethics of Indonesian
Islamic Filmmaking Alicia Izharuddin
31. Karma-Image; Insight-Image: On
Buddhism and the Cinema Victor Fan
32. Personality and Morality in Screen
Performance: Hong Kong Film Criticism and Social Reform of the 1920s Enoch
Yee-lok Tam SECTION V: Independent Practice: Networks, Labor, and Voices at
the Margins Introduction Intan Paramaditha
33. Still Doing It Themselves,
With a Little Help from Friends: Independent Filmmaking in Malaysia Two
Decades Hence Gaik Cheng Khoo
34. Slippers Outside the Door: An Annotated
Interview with Tan Pin Pin Sophia Siddique
35. Lets Love Hong Kong:
Hyper-density, Virtual Possibility, and Queer Women in Hong Kong Independent
Film Arnika Fuhrmann
36. Care in Filming, Change by Love Shuting Li
37.
Domestic temporalities and film practice: Los Otros, Quezon City and Forum
Lenteng, Jakarta Jasmine Trice
38. Unstable Pixels, Modular Selves: Digital
Subjectivity in Chinese Independent Animations Jinying Li
39. Experimentation
and Transnational Influences: Documentary Film in Post-Authoritarian
Indonesia Eric Sasono
40. Filming Resistance: A Conversation with Deepa
Dhanraj Fatima Nizaruddin SECTION VI: Archives, Festivals, and Film Pedagogy
Introduction Sangjoon Lee
41. Festivalizations and Cultural Constructions of
Asian Cinema Anne Ciecko
42. Curating the City: 10 Years of the Urban Lens
Documentary Festival in Bangalore Subasri Krishnan
43. To Be Continued: Women
Make Waves Beth Tsai
44. Film Festival Journeys - Past, Present, Future: A
Conversation with Roger Garcia Thong Kay Wee
45. Reflection on Film
Restoration, Acculturatie and Democracy - The Case Studies of Lewat Djam
Malam and Aladin Lisabona Rahman
46. Thai Film Archive and Early Thai Queer
Cinema Sanchai Chotirosseranee and Atit Pongpanit
Zhen Zhang is a Professor and directs the Asian Film and Media Initiative in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, USA. Her publications include An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896-1937; The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century; DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film; and Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. She also curates film programs and serves as a jury member for various platforms.
Sangjoon Lee is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Lee is the author of Cinema and the Cultural Cold War: US Diplomacy and the Origins of the Asian Cinema Network (2020) and the editor/co-editor of Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media (2015), Rediscovering Korean Cinema (2019), The South Korean Film Industry (2024), and Remapping the Cold War in Asian Cinemas (2024). Lee is also a director of the Asian Cinema Research Lab (ACR Lab). His works have been translated into Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian.
Debashree Mukherjee is an Associate Professor of Film and Media in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University, USA. She is author of Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020) and editor of Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema (2023). Her current book project, Tropical Machines: Extractive Media and Plantation Modernity, develops a media history of South Asian indentured migration and plantation capitalism. Debashree edits the peer-reviewed journal BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies and has published in journals such as Film History, Feminist Media Histories, and Representations.
Intan Paramaditha is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Film Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. She is the author of the novel The Wandering and short story collection Apple and Knife, and her articles have appeared in, among others, Feminist Review, Visual Anthropology, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and Film Quarterly. Her research and creative interests include travel, transnationalism, and decolonial feminism.
