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- Volume 22, Issue 1, 2011
Asian Cinema - Volume 22, Issue 1, 2011
Volume 22, Issue 1, 2011
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Center Stage: The Melodrama of Resistance
More LessCenter Stage is a critically dialectic work interrogating one type of melodrama common to Shanghai cinema in the 1930s, influenced by Hollywood, but also haunting post-1945 Hong Kong cinema. Exploring such areas not only reinforces the richness of this great achievement of New Hong Kong Cinema but also further emphasizes it relevance for the present, a relevance very much in the minds of Stanley Kwan and his team when they engaged in a collaborative enterprise, the nature of which fully appears in the director’s cut version rather than the one intended for theatrical release. Any serious study of Center Stage has, of necessity, to concentrate on the extended version.
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Pandora’s Box: Time-Image in A Chinese Odyssey and the Becoming of Chinese Cinema
By Kun QianThis essay is a devoted close reading to show how A Chinese Odyssey has translated the anxiety of identity formation into a universal consciousness of time that fits in the post-revolutionary Chinese context. First, textual reading reveals the centrality of time in identity formation. Exploring the double structure of Deleuze’s philosophy of time, Qian wishes to demonstrate that the virtual aspect of time determines the becoming of the Monkey King’s identity, which not only subverts the image of the Monk King (and other characters), but also articulates the power of falsity in the becoming of identity. Second, the slapstick “wu li tou” style subverts any “serious” reading of Hong Kong’s identity, yet paradoxically, rationalizes its own subversion. It also aims to extend the textual world to the trans-regional context, the spatial dislocation and temporal delay in the reception of this movie address not only a local psychology of Hong Kong’s identity before 1997, but also a consciousness of global time among a broader audience and the becoming of Chinese cinema by the turn of the 21st century.
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”May You Be the Mother of A Hundred Sons!”: Barrenness vs. Motherhood in Bengali Cinema
More LessBeginning with barrenness as the root cause in the break-up of husband-wife relationships in several films of Satyajit Ray namely Monihara, Devi, Charulata and Ghare-Baire, Somdatta Mandal also examines Punendu Patrea’s Streer Patra, Rituparno Ghosh’s Chokher Bali and Antarmahal (The Inner Chamber) where the director narrates a 19th century tale of a Bengali zamindar whose desperation in begetting a male heir leads to bizarre circumstances. But first with Satyajit Ray’s handling of the theme. Among the different forms of portraiture of women in the films of Satyajit Ray, the married and childless wife reveals herself in different avatars. In most cases, these women become sort of loners, or outcasts, bereft of normal heterosexual behavior. It is more than a coincidence in each case that the woman protagonist turns out to be childless.
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Agantuk: Ray’s Modernist Coda
By Binayak RayThis article will focus on the way Satyajit Ray’s films are almost invariably concerned with man’s viable connection with his society, his world, his universe. They advocate not the self’s mindless submission to contemporary society, but a new alignment between them. His heritage might have contributed to this libertarian stance. Belonging to a family with strong links to the Bengal Renaissance, Ray inherited the world-view of a class deeply committed to the European Enlightenment philosophies of progress. Expected therefore is the progressive, secular, cosmopolitan, liberal-humanist ideal of his work. Ray’s self-confessed credo is to present “not just single aspects of our life today, like contemporary politics, but a broader view of Indian history”. Hence, his persistent efforts to describe the making of a nation as it emerges from its feudal and colonial past, and embraces modernity to become a new, hybrid postcolonial society.
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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)