Book Description
This book presents the most authoritative assessment of contemporary Asian cinema available. Each chapter describes the cultural aspects of popular film production, analyzing key films in the context of the national, the regional and the global. Topics covered include: film theory and Asian cinema, popular film genres, major industry figures, the "art film", connections between the state and commercial interests, cultural policies, representations of national identity, trends in international co-production, and more.
Book Description
Shanghai in the early twentieth century was alive with art and culture. With the proliferation of popular genres such as the martial arts film, the contest among various modernist filmmakers, and the advent of sound, Chinese cinema was transforming urban life. But with the Japanese invasion in 1937, all of this came to a screeching halt. Until recently, the political establishment has discouraged comprehensive studies of the cultural phenomenon of early Chinese film, and this momentous chapter in China's history has remained largely unexamined.
The first sustained historical study of the emergence of cinema in China, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen is a fascinating narrative that illustrates the immense cultural significance of film and its power as a vehicle for social change. Named after a major feature film on the making of Chinese cinema, only part of which survives, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen reveals the intricacies of this cultural movement and explores its connections to other art forms such as photography, architecture, drama, and literature. In light of original archival research, Zhang Zhen examines previously unstudied films and expands the important discussion of how they modeled modern social structures and gender roles in early twentieth-century China.
The first volume in the new and groundbreaking series Cinema and Modernity, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen is an innovative—and well illustrated—look at the cultural history of Chinese modernity through the lens of this seminal moment in Shanghai cinema.
Book Description
How did the imperial logic underlying British and Indian film policy change with the British Empire’s loss of moral authority and political cohesion? Were British and Indian films of the 1930s and 1940s responsive to and responsible for such shifts? Cinema at the End of Empire illuminates this intertwined history of British and Indian cinema in the late colonial period. Challenging the rubric of national cinemas that dominates film studies, Priya Jaikumar contends that film aesthetics and film regulations were linked expressions of radical political transformations in a declining British empire and a nascent Indian nation. As she demonstrates, efforts to entice colonial film markets shaped Britain’s national film policies, and Indian responses to these initiatives altered the limits of colonial power in India. Imperially themed British films and Indian films envisioning a new civil society emerged during political negotiations that redefined the role of the state in relation to both film industries.
In addition to close readings of British and Indian films of the late colonial era, Jaikumar draws on a wealth of historical and archival material, including parliamentary proceedings, state-sponsored investigations into colonial filmmaking, trade journals, and intra- and intergovernmental memos regarding cinema. Her wide-ranging interpretations of British film policies, British initiatives in colonial film markets, and genres such as the Indian mythological film and the British empire melodrama reveal how popular film styles and controversial film regulations in these politically linked territories reconfigured imperial relations. With its innovative examination of the colonial film archive, this richly illustrated book presents a new way to track historical change through cinema.
Book Description
This innovative book shows how Asian American filmmakers and videomakers frame and are framed by historyâhow they define and are defined by cinematic projections of Asian American identity. Combining close readings of films and videos, sophisticated cultural analyses, and detailed production histories that reveal the complex forces at play in the making and distributing of these movies, Identities in Motion offers an illuminating interpretative framework for assessing the extraordinary range of Asian American films produced in North America.
Peter X Feng considers a wide range of worksâfrom genres such as detective films to romantic comedies to ethnographic films, documentaries, avant-garde videos, newsreels, travelogues, and even home movies. Feng begins by examining movies about three crucial moments that defined the American nation and the roles of Asian Americans within it: the arrival of Chinese and Japanese women in the American West and Hawai’i; the incorporation of the Philippines into the U.S. empire; and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In subsequent chapters Feng discusses cinematic depictions of ideological conflicts among Asian Americans and of the complex forces that compel migration, extending his nuanced analysis of the intersections of sexuality, ethnicity, and nationalist movements.
Identities in Motion illuminates the fluidity of Asian American identities, expressing the diversity and complexity of Asian Americansâincluding Filipinos, Indonesians, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Indians, and Koreansâfrom the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.
Book Description
Russell C. Leong is the editor of Amerasia Journal and Adjunct Professor of English at UCLA.
Book Description
The Flash of Capital analyzes the links between Japan’s capitalist history and its film history, illuminating what these connections reveal about film culture and everyday life in Japan. Looking at a hundred-year history of film and capitalism, Eric Cazdyn theorizes a cultural history that highlights the spaces where film and the nation transcend their customary bordersâwhere culture and capital crisscrossâand, in doing so, develops a new way of understanding historical change and transformation in modern Japan and beyond.
Cazdyn focuses on three key moments of historical contradiction: colonialism, post-war reconstruction, and globalization. Considering great classics of Japanese film, documentaries, works of science fiction, animation, and pornography, he brings to light cinematic attempts to come to terms with the tensions inherent in each historical momentâtensions between the colonizer and the colonized, between the individual and the collective, and between the national and the transnational. Paying close attention to political context, Cazdyn shows how formal inventions in the realms of acting, film history and theory, thematics, documentary filmmaking, and adaptation articulate a struggle to solve implacable historical problems. This innovative work of cultural history and criticism offers explanations of historical change that challenge conventional distinctions between the aesthetic and the geopolitical.
Customer Reviews:
read, watch, re-read.......2003-05-24
Cazdyn's book is useful both for giving an overview of what to watch for when approaching one of the selected movies for the first time and he (Cazdyn) also succedes in giving a thought-provoking outer context (ie the transformation of 'capital' in modern japan). it is important to understand that this theory of the films as economic-artefacts (not in a crude cause and effect sense, mind you) is accomplished through the very readings Cazdyn performs on them. The first step is a basic historicism that aims to survey and then go one step past existing Western reactions to key Japanese films. However, we begin to see quite early in our reading (note that i say early in the reading not early in the book, for this is a work that definitely benefits a non-synchonic pursual) that Cazdyn's ability to make these 'new' points as very much indebted to his invocation of a historical-materialist framework. Like Marx's re-read the economy of 18th C England to prove a point, so Cazdyn is rereading the economy of 20th C Japan!
It is therefore very ironic that the non-academic responses to this book so far have focused on how it is full of theory talk. yes, the jargon can seem a little think but Cazdyn is definitely not making po-mo points!
Average customer rating:
- Fluff piece
- The Best Overview We Could Ask For
- excellent survey of modern Asian cinema
- First class guided tour of Asian movies
- Slick, well-organized overview of contempo Asian cinema
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Asian Pop Cinema: Bombay to Tokyo
Lee Server
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0811821196 |
Amazon.com
This visually explosive, engaging volume covers its topic with amazing facility. Moving from Hong Kong to China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and India, author Lee Server explores the most thrilling popular films of these regions. No genre is left untouched. While Server is clearly well rounded in cinematic history, he focuses on the action, horror, fantasy, erotic, gangster, and animated films that have emerged most recently. Packing the pages with full-color photographs and writing with wonderful enthusiasm for the medium, Server reveals the diversity with which each country and its respective directors approach their material. He also includes interviews with movie masters like José Lacaba, Eddie Romero, Tomoaki Hosoyama, and of course, John Woo, whose immigration to America in the 1990s led to the creation of Face/Off and the sequel to Mission: Impossible. Asian Pop Cinema is a delicious treat for fans of Eastern cinema, and a splendid introduction for novices in search of enlightenment. --Raphael Shargel
Book Description
Asian Pop Cinema is the first full-color guide to the wide-ranging films of Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and India, served up with dozens of spectacular photographs, film stills, and movie posters. Outlandish animated science fiction, musical shoot 'em ups, sword epics, ghost stories, and erotic tales (sometimes all in one!)-the floodgates of Asian cinema are open and Western audiences are hungry for the dazzling thrills. Presenting the major films, the people behind them, the key elements of each genre, and interviews with John Woo and others, Lee Server brings a unique breadth of knowledge and inimitable wit to every page. From subversive camp to high-adrenaline crime thrillers, Asian Pop Cinema is a great read and exciting resource for both seasoned and uninitiated viewers.
Customer Reviews:
Fluff piece.......2003-02-07
If Eros in Hell has whetted the appetite for another cursory glance at Far East films, then Lee Server's book is for you. A well-written and dazzlingly laid-out book, Asian Pop Cinema is chock full of information for someone with little or no knowledge of Asian film. For those who've seen a smattering of Woo, Yimou, or Kurosawa, this book offers little information that isn't common knowledge among Eastern cinema fans. Like the films of Tsui Hark, Asian Pop Cinema looks nice but doesn't offer much entertainment. (ISBN: 0811821196) -
The Best Overview We Could Ask For.......2000-05-09
With this passionately researched and skillfully presented book, Lee Server just might open the gate a crack and enable a treasure trove of cinema to enter the English-language cultural milieu. Server approaches films that have often been overlooked or degraded by film critics and historians in the United States and he renders them stunningly in concise descriptions that are aided by bright, exciting visuals. While every chapter leaves me screaming for more information, the book is an immensely accomplished overview, and its sharp and intelligent text gives us just enough information to thoroughly wet my appetite.
In addition to his skill in presenting films to us, Server also proves to be the most accomplished of interviewers. He gets to the core of his interviewees art, and, through interviews with John Woo, Tomoso Hosokai, Eddie Romero, and others he reveals to us the passion and intelligence that makes these filmmakers important.
Who is Mr. Server? He seems to have come from a background of books on animals and pulp novelists. I have never been too interested in Sharks or Lions before, but after Server's performance with this book, I wouldn't be surprised if he made those subjects fascinating, as well. Bravo to Lee Server!
excellent survey of modern Asian cinema.......2000-01-23
I'm the author of "Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film." I've never met Mr. Server, but I can highly recommend his book. He covers all the COOL STUFF from samurai films to soft-core porn to outrageous pop animation. This is all illustrated with a wealth of truly gorgeous full-color photos. In the past two decades much of the most exciting cinema in the world has come from the East. Let this book be your guide to these amazingly entertaining films.
First class guided tour of Asian movies.......1999-11-07
A fast, fact-filled tour of Asian movies from the well known spots like Hong Kong and Japan to the more obscure like the Phil. and Thailand. Lots of interesting information, nice illustrations and good writing style.
Slick, well-organized overview of contempo Asian cinema.......1999-03-19
The author obviously has a feel for what's hip in pop culture, given his past works (including several books on Film Noir and Pulp Fiction PB Covers) and this Asian cinema primer is no exception. He touches all the correct bases as far as action & sexploitation Hong Kong Cinema (John Woo, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, Naked Killer, Sex & Zen), Bollywood (insane musical numbers and over-the-top HK-style action co-exist with incredibly ham-fisted acting and prudish "no-kissing" sexual mores) and Japanese cinema (current flaves of the month: Beat Takeshi Kitano of Fireworks & Sonatine fame and Seijan Suzuki of 60s yakuza art films). But this is just the frosting on the critical cake, scratching the surface of topics that deserve, nay require, more in-depth analysis and reporting. Still, the pix are great and chapters on Korean and Thai and Fillipino cinema are interesting. Fans whose interest is stirred will want to explore more in-depth analyses of the subject matter in Pete Tombs' MONDO MACABRO and Bey Logan's HONG KONG BABYLON.
Book Description
In recent years, Bollywood-the popular name for the Hindi cinema emanating from Mumbai, India-has received considerable attention in the global media. Why are people fascinated with Bollywood? What is the cultural significance of the films produced there?
This book addresses such questions by taking the subject of sociology to the movies. More specifically, it rejuvenates a dormant dialogue within sociology about understanding the possible relationships between cinema, culture, and society. This is done through an interdisciplinary conversation with studies of the cinema drawn from film and media, and cultural studies. Replete with memorable examples and penetrating insights, this book
- Provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical engagement with Bollywood cinema and its audiences
- Examines the role and representations of cultural icons in Bollywood films
- Discusses the Bollywood film industry as it develops in the era of globalization
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