Cinemas Identities And Beyond

Cinemas, Identities and Beyond examines different modes of representing and constructing identities in and through the medium of film, transcending the narrow confines of the local / national / regional, and challenging spatial and temporal boundaries. It gathers fifteen essays that explore different dimensions of identities in contexts ranging from domestic spheres, urban milieus, socio-political environments, diasporic film-making issues, anthropology, film festivals, and psychoanalysis, to the examination of stardom in society. Engaging with cinematic representations, narrative conventions, film form, industry concerns, and other socio-cultural-economic-political factors relating to the production, distribution, exhibition and consumption of film, Cinemas, Identities and Beyond contributes to one of the most thought-provoking contemporary debates on cinemas and identities in film studies. Revisiting films such as Farewell My Concubine, The Matrix trilogy, The Straight Story, El Topo, and Days of Being Wild, this anthology establishes a framework that actively queries stabilised, ideological paradigms. The book discovers new frontiers and discourses to help us better understand ourselves and our surroundings when another decade of the new millennium is about to begin. Cinemas, Identities and Beyond will prove to be of value to a broad range of scholars, critics and students who are interested in issues pertaining to identities, and their construction in and beyond film.

The appearance of sound film boosted entertainment circuits around the world, drawing cultural cartographies that forged images of spaces, nations and regions. By the late 1920s and early ‘30s, film played a key role in the configuration of national and regional cultural identities in incipient mass markets. Over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this transmedia logic not only went unthreatened, but also intensified with the arrival of new media and the development of new technologies. In this respect, this book strikes a dialogue between analyses that reflect the flows and transits of music, films and artists, mainly in the Ibero-American space, although it also features essays on Soviet and Asian cinema, with a view to exploring the processes of configuration of cultural identities. As such, this work views national borders as flexible spaces that permit an exploration of the appearance of transversal relations that are part of broader networks of circulation, as well as economic, social and political models beyond the domestic sphere.

Zhang Yimou's first film, Red Sorghum, took the Golden Bear Award in 1988 at the Berlin International Film Festival. Since then Chinese films have continued to arrest worldwide attention and capture major film awards, winning an international following that continues to grow. Transnational Chinese Cinemas spans nearly the entire length of twentieth-century Chinese film history. The volume traces the evolution of Chinese national cinema, and demonstrates that gender identity has been central to its formation. Femininity, masculinity and sexuality have been an integral part of the filmic discourses of modernity, nationhood, and history. This volume represents the most comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date study of China's major cinematic traditions. It is an indispensable source book for modern Chinese and Asian history, politics, literature, and culture.

Women in African Cinema: Beyond the Body Politic showcases the very prolific but often marginalised presence of women in African cinema, both on the screen and behind the camera. This book provides the first in-depth and sustained examination of women in African cinema. Films by women from different geographical regions are discussed in case studies that are framed by feminist theoretical and historical themes, and seen through an anti-colonial, philosophical, political and socio-cultural cinematic lens. A historical and theoretical introduction provides the context for thematic chapters exploring topics ranging from female identities, female friendships, women in revolutionary cinema, motherhood and daughterhood, women’s bodies, sexuality, and spirituality. Each chapter serves up a theoretical-historical discussion of the chosen theme, followed by two in-depth case studies that provide contextual and transnational readings of the films as well as outlining production, distribution and exhibition contexts. This book contributes to the feminist anti-racist revision of the canon by placing African women filmmakers squarely at the centre of African film culture. Demonstrating the depth and diversity of the feminine or female aesthetic in African cinema, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of African cinema, media studies and African studies.

The trajectory of Hong Kong films had been drastically affected long before the city’s official sovereignty transfer from the British to the Chinese in 1997. The change in course has become more visible in recent years as China has aggressively developed its national film industry and assumed the role of powerhouse in East Asia’s cinematic landscape. The author introduces the “Cinema of Transitions” to study the New Hong Kong Cinema and on- and off-screen life against this background. Using examples from the 1980s to the present, this book offers a fresh perspective on how Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films, filmmakers, audiences, and the workings of film business in East Asia have become major platforms on which “transitions” are negotiated.

Orientalism is about much more than just information gathered about the East within its general postcolonial period. In this period, orientalism is a Western discourse that dominated and shaped the view of the East. There is “otherization” in the way the West has historically looked at the East and within the information presented about it. These original stories of travelers in the past and previous telling about the East are facing a reconstruction through modern types of media. Cinema, television, news, newspaper, magazine, internet, social media, photography, literature, and more are transforming the way the East is presented and viewed. Under the headings of post-orientalism, neo-orientalism, or self-orientalism, these new orientalist forms of work in combination with both new and traditional media are redefining orientalism in the media and beyond. The Handbook of Research on Contemporary Approaches to Orientalism in Media and Beyond shows how both new media and traditional media deal with orientalism today through the presentation of gender, race, religion, and culture that make up orientalist theory. The chapters focus on how orientalism is presented in the media, cinema, TV, photography, and more. This book is ideal for communications theorists, media analysts, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students working in fields that include mass media, communications, film studies, ethnic studies, history, sociology, and cultural studies.

One of the fastest growing and most internationally renowned cinemas in Southeast Asia is that of Thailand. In the first ever book devoted solely to this major centre of creative filmmaking, experts on contemporary and historic Thai film provide a timely overview and discussion of key films, directors and current movements in the region in a comprehensive encyclopaedia format. What many critics, analysts and scholars have retrospectively christened `New Thai Cinema' began to take shape in the late 1990s when national film moved away from its position as lower-class and provincial entertainment and became a firm fixture in Bangkok multiplexes and festivals worldwide. This book will provide information on the influential figures behind the films - up to and succeeding the 1997 watershed film Dang Bireley's and Young Gangsters that began the breakaway movement - as well as detailing and explaining the traditions of popular and art-house genres specific to Thailand. Featuring contributions on Thai visionaries such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Wisit Sasanatieng and providing rare insight into early Thai cinema, this is an essential scholarly guide to a vibrant aspect of Southeast Asian cinema - its history, industry and aesthetic trends - for scholars and students alike.

Chinese Cinemas: International Perspectives examines the impact the rapid expansion of Chinese filmmaking in mainland China has had on independent and popular Chinese cinemas both in and outside of China. While the large Chinese markets are coveted by Hollywood, the commercial film industry within the People’s Republic of China has undergone rapid expansion since the 1990s. Its own production, distribution and exhibition capacities have increased exponentially in the past 20 years, producing box-office success both domestically and abroad. This volume gathers the work of a range of established scholars and newer voices on Chinese cinemas to address questions that interrogate both Chinese films and the place and space of Chinese cinemas within the contemporary global film industries, including the impact on independent filmmaking both within and outside of China; the place of Chinese cinemas produced outside of China; and the significance of new internal and external distribution and exhibition patterns on recent conceptions of Chinese cinemas. This is an ideal book for students and researchers interested in Chinese and Asian Cinema, as well as for students studying topics such as World Cinema and Asian Studies.