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- Volume 18, Issue 2, 2007
Asian Cinema - Volume 18, Issue 2, 2007
Volume 18, Issue 2, 2007
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Spectral Imaginings and National (Be)Longing in When the Tenth Month Comes and Spirits
By Lan DuongDang Nhat Minh’s When the Tenth Month Comes (1984) revolves around a woman who safeguards her husband-in-law’s family from the fact of her husband’s death during Viet Nam’s war with Cambodia. Shot in black and white, its expressive qualities are translated on-screen through the actors’ emotional gestures and facial expressions. The film invites spectators to experience alongside the female protagonist the processes of mourning that mark her character development and denouement within the narrative. On the other side of the spectrum, Spirits (2004) is a film made by Vietnamese American Victor Vu. Filled with horrifying images of female ghosts, this film employs well-known Vietnamese American actors from Southern California to play the major leads. In fact, Vu has made several films that deal with the experiences of Vietnamese Americans. Here, however, Vu changes the terrain entirely: he shoots his film in Santa Ana, California, yet sets his film in present-day Viet Nam within an abandoned haunted house. As I will argue, despite the setting, the imprint of a Vietnamese American sensibility limns the film’s frames both in terms of its production and themes. What unites the two films is the suturing function that the ghosts perform for the characters in the films, making the protagonists conscious of the atrocities of the recent past. The notion of a recent temporality is key and provides the basis for the films’ critiques; the ghosts are not hoary figures from long ago, but rather, they are reminders of the still-present horrors of the contemporary era. This essay interrogates the ideological effects and visual performances of the ghostly repressed as contemporary figurations of Vietnamese imperialism and patriarchy
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Racial Hopes/Dreams/Fantasies: Negotiating Race, Class, and the Nation in Sepet
By Sze Wei AngThis essay will examine how a recent popular Malaysian film, Sepet, functions within local political discourse and the ongoing project of nationbuilding, and at how this film in particular—unlike other contemporary Malaysian films that are garnering acclaim in foreign film festivals—makes it onto the big screen in Malaysia and becomes a part of mainstream discourse on race. As part of the national discussion on race relations and what it means to be “Malaysian,” the film’s depiction and portrayal of race relations—few mainstream Malaysian films even broach the topic—has been controversial. Some conservative parties in the country, as I show later in the paper, have labeled the film “liberal”—a derogatory label in their worldview—while others have defended the film and lauded it as a “brave” intervention that promotes further inter-racial and inter-cultural understandings. However, I argue that Sepet in and of itself is a commodity within the cultural politics of Malaysia; it exists in a dialectical relationship with the state-appointed caretakers of national culture and the state’s moral or religious systems, as well as with those who position themselves as being more radical or “tolerant.”
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Contesting Indonesian Nationalism and Masculinity in Cinema
More LessIn one of the most powerful films in the New Order regime in Indonesia (1966-1998), Arifin C. Noer’s Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (The 30th September Movement Treason/PKI, 1984), a scene shows a general’s daughter looking admiringly at a portrait of her father in his military uniform (Fig. 1 ).The lowangle point-of-view shot of the portrait creates an aura of grandeur surrounding the general figure. The child tells her mother that she wants to have a star emblem on her chest like the one worn by her father. Her mother, while putting her husband’s uniform into the closet, replies that she has to fight in a battle (berjuang)fightfff in order to get a star. The father is absent from this home setting but the uniform, an embodiment of his presence, binds the mother and the daughter. This scene establishes the ideal manhood in the Indonesian military with the general becoming a heroic father figure in both public and domestic spheres. It introduces the culture of Bapakism /Father-ism in Indonesian politics, which is disrupted yet later restored within and outside the filmic diegesis.
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Negotiating the Spectre and Spectatorship of Trauma in Rithy Panh’s S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003)
More LessCambodian filmmaker and genocide survivor Rithy Panh discusses the necessity of leaving a record as part of a particular process of forgetting (and in effect, remembering) in the context of the traumatic events and memories of the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge established the state of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) on April 17, 1975 – overcoming the U.S.-backed government administration headed by General Lon Nol in the process – and existed until the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia that dissolved DK on Jan. 7, 1979. During the Khmer Rouge regime, around two million Cambodians (a quarter of the country’s population at the time) died as a result of starvation, exhaustion in labor camps, tortures/interrogations and mass executions in the name of creating a classless, agrarian society of a “pure” Khmer race. Panh’s family members were among the two million Cambodians who died during the regime.
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Watching the Military’s War Movies: (De)Constructing the Enemy of the State in a Contemporary Burmese Soldier Drama
More LessWhile themes of political oppression, economic poverty, and Buddhist traditions tend to dominate scholarly work about Burma, the popular culture industries, from rock music to novels to cinema demand closer attention. The Burmese motion picture industry can trace an 87-year history. In spite of, and in some cases, because of Burma’s turbulent history of militarism, internal conflict, and isolationist politics, the film industry has been a mainstay for people living within the country’s borders, and with the exception of the period of Burmese involvement in World War II, the various studios have continuously produced films in the Burmese language since the early days of cinema in the region. Popular knowledge of films and entertainment stars is testament to the industry’s influence; even among ethnic Shan people who have migrated to Thailand, knowledge of, and interest in Burmese films persists.
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From Beyond Rangoon to Shan VCD: The Politics and Authenticity of Appropriation
More LessLikhommai Panglong or “The Promises of Panglong” is a unique Shan video compact disc (VCD) for three reasons. First, it features images of the 1988 political uprising in Burma which were appropriated from other existing films. Second, these images were put together with political lyrics sung in the Shan language talking about the plight of the Shan people and the oppressive Burmese military regime. Third, because these political images and lyrics have never been and cannot be produced inside Burma, Shan migrants who cross the border to seek work in Thailand have found an opportunity to produce this political VCD while in exile. The result is an appropriation of several existing sources, which in turn creates unexpected results in terms of spectatorship responses among Shan migrant audiences. The production and the consumption of this VCD will be the focus of this paper.
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Daring To Be First: The Japanese Woman Director Tazuko Sakane (1904-1971)
More LessWhen Tazuko Sakane wrote those lines in 1936 at the age of 32, she was already out of the mainstream of expectations for a woman in Japan. She was a woman of good family divorced and determined to live on her own terms— with help, it must be added, from a sympathetic father. Her poem goes on, but its opening lines are enough. They speak for a defining moment in this young woman’s life. She titled this expression of that moment “Intoxication” (Yoi), and no wonder. The goal she was setting herself lay in an exclusively male preserve, one which partook of traditional theater’s place beyond the pale of socially acceptable affiliations. Cinema itself in 1936 was expanding and evolving at a youthful pace, as art and industry both, but it was decades shy of being ready to imagine, much less welcome, a woman in the director’s chair.
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Notes on Contemporary Singapore Cinema (1991-2007)
By Tan See Kam2006 was a record-making year for contemporary Singapore cinema. It saw an unprecedented release of ten feature films, including the first 3-D CGI film, Zodiac: The Race Begins (dir. Edward Foo; Cubix International). That year, Digital Media Academy made its foray into the local filmmaking scene for the first time, with three semi-professional DV films, namely, Unarmed Combat (dir. Han Yew Kwang), S11 (co-dir. Gilbert Chan & Joshua Chiang), and The High Cost of Living (dir. Leonard Lai Yok Wai).1 These three films all received partial funding from the stated-funded Singapore Film Commission (SFC) , set up in 1998 for the purpose of nurturing the nation’s budding film industry by way of training personnel and funding productions, including co-sponsoring the annual Singapore International Film Festival. Finally Zhao Wei Films’ Be With Me (dir. & scr. Eric Khoo, 2005) became the country’s first Oscars (Best Foreign Film) nominee; but this social drama which interweaves the autobiography of Theresa Chan, a real-life deaf and blind woman, with three fictional stories of love and longing in urban Singapore, was subsequently disqualified when the 2006 Academy Award committee decided that English was the dominant language in this otherwise multilingual HD-to-35mm film.
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South Korean Scholars Studying North Korean Movies
By Jiwon YoonWhile North Korea is physically the closest country to South Korea, sharing the same land mass, the two countries are virtually inaccessible to one another. For 50 years, North Korea was a veiled, mysterious country for South Koreans. During the height of the Cold War era, South Koreans were taught that North Korea was the enemy. The South Korean government created a mood of fear and intimidation by spreading propaganda about how North Korea was planning to wage war -- a war of aggression. South Korean students often had to make posters for anti-communist campaigns. A successful South Korean children’s animation, “General DDOL-Yi” (1978), portrayed North Korean women as foxes, North Korean soldiers as wolves, and Kim, Il-Sung as a pig (Fig. 1 ). During that time, many South Korean children drew wolves, foxes, and pigs when they were asked to draw North Koreans.
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Matrubhoomi: Gender Violence and the Motherland
More Less“Writer-director Manish Jha extrapolates from our current reality to imagine an Indian village where, due to routine killing of female newborns, women have entirely been wiped out…the frustrations, fanaticism that follow in this gender-skewed village is the story of Matrubhoomi” (Wadhwa, 2004, http://www.countercurrents.org/gen- wadhwa 040304.htm ). Matrubhoomi, a full-length feature film in Hindi, was released in mid-2003. The film received an opening in limited theaters in India, and reportedly did not make good business ( http://in.rediff.com/movies/2003/oct/16jha.htm). Majority of the reviews that the film received note that its theme and treatment is too disturbing to be palatable for average audiences.
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Teaching Japanese Culture Through Anime: A Case Study
More LessJapanese animated films (anime1 ) play an important role internationally not only as a representation of Japanese culture but also as a way of bringing non-Japanese who share an interest in anime together. Kelts (2006: 5) notes that he has seen examples of Japanese anime in the daily lives of American people — in friends’ homes, on posters on college campuses and streets, etc. —which he refers to as “a third wave of Japanophilia.”
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Between Illusion and Reality: Jia Zhangke’s Vision of Present-day China in The World
By Xiaoling ShiAfter filming a series of young and insignificant flaneurs strolling at the margin of cities, in The World , Jia Zhangke’s attention has focused on migrant workers, who seem to be the only subaltern that the mainstream discourse can tolerate. Among all the films Jia has so far directed, The World is the only one that has passed the censorship of the Chinese government and has been allowed to be presented to the public. However, like his censored films, The World connotes Jia’s consistent derision of contemporary Chinese politics. Perhaps the censors are elated by both the panoply shown on the stage of the World Park and the multicolored animation displayed on the screen, the brightness of which cannot be seen in Jia’s previous films. Yet, by juxtaposing the gay festivity of the park with the gloomy real life of migrant workers, Jia acutely expresses a dismal view of present-day China: the Chinese think they are living in a modern society and believe that China has become a significant part of the international community; it is, however, just an illusion. Perhaps, more deplorably, in the course of chasing after the West, the Chinese have lost sense of their culture.
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Takashi Miike’s The Great Yokai War
More LessDuring the second sequence of Black Rainbow (1990), an undeservedly neglected film written and directed by Mike Hodges, one character notices the devastating architectural changes affecting a small town in North Carolina. He compares it to a “lobotomy gobbling up your past like a plague of locusts, a national lobotomy.” His remarks also apply to dominant tendencies in British and Western European culture that now eagerly abandon past traditions for the dubious benefits of a global economic postmodernist era. Fortunately, this is not the case in Japanese cinema. During 2005, Takashi Miike’s The Great Yokai War appeared. It received great acclaim in national and international festivals. Like veteran director Seijun Suzuki’s Tanuki-Goten/ Princess Racoon (2005) and the younger generation Pang Brothers’s Re-Cycle (2006), The Great Yokai War promotes reverence and respect for Japanese popular culture desiring to preserve it for present and future audiences without denying the importance of new technological developments that transmit past traditions in novel ways. All these films represent different types of warnings about losing valuable traditions in a developing Asian world rapidly moving into the 21st Century and in danger of eliminating valuable elements from a supposedly redundant past.
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Nostalgia, The Search For Japanese Identity, and Tora-san as Cultural Icon
More LessThe enormously popular It’s Tough Being A Man films iconized the search for a lost Japan and self-discovery through travel. Beloved by Japanese, the films played twice a year until the death of the hero, Tora-san. Cleverly manipulating the age-old conflict between giri (duty) and ninjo (feelings), the films capitalized on the popular furusato (hometown) boom and the modern “westernized” Japanese attempt to recuperate a vanishing tradition. Was the Japanese culture portrayed symptomatic of “invented tradition?” What did the interplay between travel and self-identity, periphery versus center, and madonna (beautiful, young woman) and travel signify?
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Traces of Time in Traces of Love (2006): South Korean National History and the Time-Image
More LessThis article examines the representation of time in the recent South Korean film Traces of Love (Gaeulro) (2006). Using an approach derived from Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema (and with particular reference to his idea of the time-image), it analyzes how the film’s disrupted narrative time scheme examines recent national history. On several occasions, Traces of Love creates time-images that deliberately confuse events in the past and present. In this way, it explores the recent trauma of national economic collapse and its potentially stultifying effect on the present state of the nation. The timeimage is integral to the film’s attempts to provide an upbeat message concerning South Korea’s future, a process in which the depiction of several sites of touristic beauty and national heritage are also crucial. Thus this article demonstrates that, although Deleuze’s ideas are rarely applied to Asian cinemas, they are key to understanding the way Traces of Love manipulates narrative time to explore recent South Korean national history.
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Trauma and Comfort: A Study of Korean Romantic Melodrama
More LessIn the past decade, the Korean film industry has experienced remarkable growth. According to data from the Korean Film Council (refer to the figure below), Korea is experiencing an increasing demand for Korean films, as well as a decreasing demand for foreign films. Korean films have captured more than 50 percent of domestic market share and have outperformed foreign films at the box office since 2003. Once restrained by national instability, censorship, and regulations, Korean cinema is enjoying a renaissance in recent years, due, to some extent, to the introduction of the Film Promotion Law of 1995
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 34 (2023)
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Volume 33 (2022)
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Volume 32 (2021)
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Volume 31 (2020)
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Volume 30 (2019)
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Volume 29 (2018)
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Volume 28 (2017)
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Volume 27 (2016)
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Volume 26 (2015)
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Volume 25 (2014)
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Volume 24 (2013)
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Volume 23 (2012)
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Volume 22 (2011)
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Volume 21 (2010)
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Volume 20 (2009)
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Volume 19 (2008)
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Volume 18 (2007)
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Volume 17 (2006)
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Volume 16 (2005)
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Volume 15 (2004)
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Volume 14 (2003)
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Volume 13 (2002)
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Volume 12 (2001)
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Volume 11 (2000)
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Volume 10 (1998 - 1999)
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Volume 9 (1997 - 1998)
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Volume 8 (1996)
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Volume 7 (1995)
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Volume 6 (1993)