1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to 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.
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.
Introduction: Trans-Asian Cinemas at Home in the World Zhen Zhang, Debashree Mukherjee, Intan Paramaditha and Sangjoon Lee 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 Women’s 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 Korea’s 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 Ismail’s Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) Stephen Teo 25. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite as a Remake of Kim Ki-young’s 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 Cheh’s 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. Let’s 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
Biography
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.
