Contemporary Asian Cinema

From the critically acclaimed Malaysian film Sepet to the on-going box office successes of the films created by Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, cinematic texts from the nations of Asia are increasingly capturing audiences beyond their national boundaries. Tradition, Culture and Aesthetics in Contemporary Asian Cinema explores the rise of popular Asian cinema and provides an understanding of the aesthetic elements that mark these films as 'Asian cinema'. Incorporating examples of contemporary films from China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and India, Peter C. Pugsley gives readers a fresh insight into the rapidly developing discourse on popular Asian media. The book's chapters focus on the aesthetic features of national cinemas and the intersections of local/global encountered in the production, distribution and consumption of contemporary Asian films. By tracking across some of the most influential countries in Asia the book is able to offer new perspectives into the visual and aural features that create greater understanding between East and West. As distribution and technological advances make Asian films more readily available, an understanding of the different aesthetics at play will enable readers of this book to recognise key cultural motifs found in cinematic texts from Asia.

Presenting an authoritative assessment of contemporary Asian cinema, this work describes the cultural aspects of popular film production, analyzing key films in the context of the national, the regional and the global.

From the critically acclaimed Malaysian film Sepet to the on-going box office successes of the films created by Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, cinematic texts from the nations of Asia are increasingly capturing audiences beyond their national boundaries. Tradition, Culture and Aesthetics in Contemporary Asian Cinema explores the rise of popular Asian cinema and provides an understanding of the aesthetic elements that mark these films as 'Asian cinema'. Incorporating examples of contemporary films from China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and India, Peter C. Pugsley gives readers a fresh insight into the rapidly developing discourse on popular Asian media. The book's chapters focus on the aesthetic features of national cinemas and the intersections of local/global encountered in the production, distribution and consumption of contemporary Asian films. By tracking across some of the most influential countries in Asia the book is able to offer new perspectives into the visual and aural features that create greater understanding between East and West. As distribution and technological advances make Asian films more readily available, an understanding of the different aesthetics at play will enable readers of this book to recognise key cultural motifs found in cinematic texts from Asia.

"Asia produces more films than any other part of the world. With chapters on Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, the 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, transnational and diasporic dimensions of Asian filmmaking and viewing, the politics of language choice, the impact of emerging technologies on filmmaking practice, and modes of exhibition. This book is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in popular culture and Asian films in a changing world."--

This book explores the range and dynamism of contemporary Asian cinemas, covering East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia), South Asia (Bollywood), and West Asia (Iran), in order to discover what is common about them and to engender a theory or concept of "Asian Cinema". It goes beyond existing work which provides a field survey of Asian cinema, probing more deeply into the field of Asian Cinema, arguing that Asian Cinema constitutes a separate pedagogical subject, and putting forward an alternative cinematic paradigm. The book covers "styles", including the works of classical Asian Cinema masters, and specific genres such as horror films, and Bollywood and Anime, two very popular modes of Asian Cinema; "spaces", including artistic use of space and perspective in Chinese cinema, geographic and personal space in Iranian cinema, the private "erotic space" of films from South Korea and Thailand, and the persistence of the family unit in the urban spaces of Asian big cities in many Asian films; and "concepts" such as Pan-Asianism, Orientalism, Nationalism and Third Cinema. The rise of Asian nations on the world stage has been coupled with a growing interest, both inside and outside Asia, of Asian culture, of which film is increasingly an indispensable component - this book provides a rich, insightful overview of what exactly constitutes Asian Cinema.

This book discusses contemporary film in all the main countries of Southeast Asia, and the social practices and ideologies which films either represent or oppose. It shows how film acquires signification through cultural interpretation, and how film also serves as a site of contestations between social and political agents seeking to promote, challenge, or erase certain meanings, messages or ideas from public circulation. A unique feature of the book is that it focuses as much on films as it does on the societies from which these films emerge: it considers the reasons for film-makers taking the positions they take; the positions and counter-positions taken; the response of different communities; and the extent to which these interventions are connected to global flows of culture and capital. The wide range of subjects covered include documentaries as political interventions in Singapore; political film-makers’ collectives in the Philippines, and films about prostitution in Cambodia and patriotism in Malaysia, and the Chinese in Indonesia. The book analyses films from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, across a broad range of productions – such as mainstream and independent features across genres (for example comedy, patriotic, political, historical genres) alongside documentary, classic and diasporic films.

This book is an original volume of essays that sheds new and critical light on current and emerging filmmaking trends and practices in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. A timely and important contribution to existing scholarship in the field.

This ground-breaking book explores the moral dimensions of sexual imagery in contemporary, general-release Asian films. It examines debates that arise over aesthetic styles and the cultural and traditional influences that determine the content and impact of these films. The social and regulatory environments for filmmakers across Asia reflect distinct national and cultural differences. In just the past decade, for instance, Indian cinema has rapidly moved from representations of coy and submissive female protagonists to highly eroticized leading ladies unafraid of flaunting their sexuality. On the other hand, the cinema emerging from the Chinese mainland has been much more circumspect in its representations of overt sexuality, at times in conflict with other Chinese cinemas from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This use of sexual imagery or morally questionable film content raises on-going debates into censorship and the use of state or industry controls to protect certain sectors of society from exposure to particular narratives or images. Film, like all forms of art, fulfils a number of aesthetic functions for local, regional and international audiences. As distribution and technological advances make Asian films more readily available across the globe, an understanding of the different aesthetics at play will enable readers of this book to recognize key cultural motifs in representations of onscreen sexuality and the surrounding controversies found in cinematic texts from Asia.