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- Volume 24, Issue 1, 2013
Asian Cinema - Volume 24, Issue 1, 2013
Volume 24, Issue 1, 2013
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The long take and the time image in recent ‘Chinese’ cinemas: Realism reconsidered
More LessThis article addresses criticism about the ostensibly mannerist and inauthentic adoption of a long-take, long-shot style by directors within recent ‘Chinese’ cinema, particularly Jia Zhangke, and defends the legitimacy of the dialectical employment of stylistic techniques in the service of film realism – not, however, a simplistic re-presentationally conceived realism, but realism as a particular aesthetic production. In doing so it defends the dual notions of film as art, and of film art as committed to social truth.
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A passage to Tokyo: The art of Ozu, remembered
More LessThe most appropriate analogy for the art in Yasujiro Ozu’s films – particularly Tokyo Story (1953), the subject of this article – is Zen Buddhism, as it is for traditional Japanese arts, crafts or skills such as painting, gardening, archery, the tea ceremony, haiku poetry, Noh drama, judo and kendo. Zen is not an organized religion with social and political concerns like Shintoism (itself devoted in part to nature worship, to the cultivation of a harmonious relationship between man and the natural environment) or Christianity, but a way of living that has permeated the fabric of Japanese culture for well over 1300 years. The fountainhead of Zen is a fundamental unity of experience in which there is no dichotomy or discord between man and nature (in western terms, this comes close to pantheism), and which thus permits the attainment of transcendental enlightenment through meditation, self-contemplation and intuitive knowledge. The great threat to this communal oneness, it could be argued, has been ‘modernization’ in the wake of the industrial-technological revolution, especially as such modernization affected Japan during the post-World War II period: precisely the period during which Tokyo Story takes place, and which forms a quiet but nonetheless meaningful backdrop for its action.
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Vengeance was his: The post-war cinema of Japan’s Shohei Imamura
More LessOutrageous, insightful and sensuous, the films of Shohei Imamura (1926–2006) are among the greatest glories of post-war Japanese cinema, yet Imamura remains largely unknown outside Japan. It is the explosive, at times anarchic quality of Imamura’s work that makes him appear ‘uncharacteristically Japanese’ when seen in the context of the films of Ozu, Mizoguchi or Kurosawa. Perhaps no other film-maker anywhere has so taken up Godard’s challenge to end the distinction between ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction’ films. Indeed, Imamura has been referred to as the ‘cultural anthropologist’ of the Japanese cinema. Yet, if anything, Imamura’s films argue against an overly clinical approach to understanding Japan, as they often celebrate the irrational and instinctual aspects of Japanese culture. This article is an overview of Imamura’s entire career, with emphasis on Vengeance Is Mine (1979), a complex, absorbing study of a cold-blooded killer and Imamura’s greatest commercial as well as critical success.
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Apichatpong: Staging the photo session
More LessWhen Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Loong Boonmee raleuk chat /Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2010, many international critics acclaimed its modernist cinematic vocabulary coupled with what they perceived to be Thai exoticism in character depiction, local custom, and environment. Focus on exoticism in Apichatpong’s films has been a familiar refrain in international critical reception of his films. This article explores reception of Uncle Boonmee in two registers: that of the international critic who knows little about Thai history or localisms, as opposed to that of a spectator with a wider and more nuanced appreciation of Thai history and custom. It is argued that the film is structured around a thematics of history/memory/remembrance. Texts speaking to recent Thai history are explored in order to exemplify the rich cultural associations surrounding Uncle Boonmee. Additionally, it is argued that this thematics and its surrounding cultural texts are woven together by a central trope of photography, theoretically enlivened by using Walter Benjamin’s concept of the ‘optical unconscious’. Apichatpong has constructed a film text that ingeniously melds a slice of Thai history with that of the fictive life of Uncle Boonmee and his relationships to set in motion parallel discourses – a personal life suggestive of the ‘life’ of the Thai nation.
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Beyond marginalization: Kungfu Kindergarten as a ‘glocal’ response to Kungfu Panda
By Luying ChenThis article discusses how the Hong Kong animated film Mai Dou xiang dangdang/McDull: Kungfu Kindergarten (Xie 2009, hereafter Kungfu Kindergarten) responds both to Dreamwork’s film Kungfu Panda (Stevenson and Osborne 2008) and mainland Chinese receptions of Kungfu Panda. Whereas the latter demonstrate how globalization coopts the local into its powerful discourse to create various national or nationalist responses, Kungfu Kindergarten constitutes a ‘glocal’ reaction. It forms a counter discourse to the discourse of magic in Kungfu Panda, thereby reviving the Daoist discourse of ziran, defined by the Daoist master in the film as ‘self, unpretentious, and undistorted.’ Instead of returning Daoism to the Chinese national(ist) discourse, however, the film further redefines ziran as a transnational feminine discourse. Situated within the context of China’s response to Western modernity and post-colonial Hong Kong’s relationship to mainland China and the West, the film articulates a Hong Kong voice which offers China an exit out of marginalization and self-marginalization since the Opium War.
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Two or three things about Mao, Godard and Kang Youwei
More LessThis is an interview with Evans Chan about his recent documentaries Two or Three Things About Kang Youwei (2013) and Datong: The Great Society (2011), in which he discusses the various cultural and historical issues surrounding the significance of his chosen subject.
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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)