Asian cinema is an area of increasing interest in Anglo-US film studies while Asian films are now widely distributed and popular with western audiences. The fascination with Asian cinema must be examined in the context of a complex and often problematic relationship between western scholars, students, viewers and Asian films. This book, therefore, examines a number of detailed case studies (such as the films of Ozu, Bruce Lee, Hong Kong and Turkish cinema, Hindi melodramas, Godzilla films, Taiwanese directors and Fifth Generation Chinese cinema) and uses them in order to investigate the limitations of Anglo-US theoretical models and critical paradigms. By engaging the readers with familiar areas of critical discourse (such as postcolonial criticism, 'national cinema', 'genre', 'authorship' and 'stardom') the book aims to introduce within such contexts the 'unfamiliar' case studies which will be explored in depth and detail. The advantage of such an approach is that it works with the dynamics of familiarity/unfamiliarity and resists the temptation to construct Asian cinemas as a gallery of exotic objects that might be particularly fascinating but remain deeply distant and foreign.
Features *A comprehensive study of Asian cinemas, including Hong Kong, Japan, China, India, Turkey and Taiwan *An accessible guide for the study and research of Asian cinema which addresses undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers * Each section contains a contextualising introduction * Includes key texts by Ackbar Abbas, Rey Chow, David Desser, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Nezih Erdo
Acknowledgements; Notes on contributors; Introduction, Dimitris Eleftheriotis; Part I: Approaching Asian Cinemas; Section 1 Orientalism and Japanese Cinema; Japanese cinema and orientalism, Gary Needham; 1. A filmmaker for all seasons, David Desser; 2. The difficulty of being radical: the discipline of film studies and the postcolonial world order, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto; 3. Godzilla and the Japanese nightmare: when Them! is U.S., Chon Noriega; 4. Monster island: Godzilla and Japanese sci-fi/horror/fantasy, Philip Brophy; Section 2 Colonial Encounters, Post-colonial Criticism and Hong Kong Cinema; The post-colonial Hong Kong cinema, Gary Needham; 5. The new Hong Kong cinema and the deja disparu, Ackbar Abbas; 6. Kung Fu: negotiating nationalism and modernity, Siu Leung Li; 7. Under 'Western eyes': the personal odyssey of Huang Fei-Hong in Once upon a Time in China, Tony Williams; Section 3 Cross-Cultural Criticism and Chinese Cinema; Cross-cultural criticism and Chinese cinema, Dimitris Eleftheriotis; 8. Problematizing cross-cultural analysis: the case of women in the recent Chinese cinema, E. Ann Kaplan; 9. Seeing modern China: toward a theory of ethnic spectatorship, Rey Chow; 10. Yellow Earth: Western analysis and a non-Western text, Esther Yau; Part II: Frameworks of Study; Section 4 National Cinema: The Case of Turkey; Turkish national cinema, Dimitris Eleftheriotis; 11. Narratives of resistance: national identity and ambivalence in the Turkish melodrama between; 1965 and 1975 229, Nezih Erdog an; 12. Translating modernity: remakes in Turkish cinema, Ahmet Gurata; 13. Mute bodies, disembodied voices: notes on sound in Turkish popular cinema, Nezih Erdog an; Section 5 Genre Criticism and Popular Indian Cinema; Genre criticism and popular Indian cinema, Dimitris Eleftheriotis; 14. Indian cinema: pleasures and popularity, Rosie Thomas; 15. Addressing the spectator of a 'third world' national cinema: the Bombay 'social' film of the 1940s and 1950s, Ravi S. Vasudevan; 16. 'Hum Aapke Hain Koun?' - cinephilia and Indian films, Lalitha Gopalan; 17. Shifting pitch: The Bollywood Song sequence in the Anglo-American market, Ian Garwood; Section 6 Questions of Authorship and Taiwanese Cinema; Film authorship and Taiwanese cinema, Gary Needham and I-Fen Wu; 18. Ozu and the colonial encounter in Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Gary Needham; 19. Tokyo love story and NY bagels: East-West cultural encounter in Edward Yang's Taipei Story, I-Fen Wu; 20. The transnational cinema of Ang Lee, Julianne Pidduck; Section 7 Stardom: The Case of Bruce Lee; Bruce Lee: stardom and identity, Dimitris Eleftheriotis and Gary Needham; 21. Bruce Lee: narcissus and the little dragon, Stephen Teo; 22. Han's Island revisited: Enter the Dragon as transnational cult film, Leon Hunt; 23. Fists of fury: discourses of race and masculinity in the martial arts cinema, Yvonne Tasker; Bibliography Index of films/TV programmes Index of key terms.
