Asian Cinema - Volume 22, Issue 2, 2011

Recently, there were erroneous statements made about the founding of Asian Cinema Studies Society and what later became Asian Cinema. Let the record show that the founder of ACSS was Mira Reym Binford of Quinnipiac College, Hamden, CT. She used two venues to solicit interest in the society the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies and the Society for Cinema Studies. Confusion as to those involved at the beginning, besides Mira, probably set in because the same people did not necessarily attend both conferences. However, in the first issue of Asian Cinema Studies Society Newsletter, Mira made it clear that ACSS was started at the annual meeting of AAS in 1984, "for the purpose of encouraging academic study and general awareness of the cinemas of Asia" (Fig. 1).

This essay examines three critically-acclaimed Malaysian films directed by the late Yasmin Ahmad: Sepet (Slit Eyes, 2004), Mukhsin (2007) and Talentime (2009),1 all of which have propelled her to the forefront of contemporary Malaysian cinema. Apart from earning praise and accolade at international film festivals, ranging from Tokyo to Berlin,2 retrospectives of her work have also been held in Tokyo, Thessaloniki, Taipei, and Hawaii. Yasmin's films have been known for reflecting the wide ethnic and cultural diversity of the country. Indeed, her films often address potentially explosive subject matter by contesting accepted norms and practices within the volatile multiculturalism of Malaysia.

The year 2005 was a defining moment for Philippine independent cinema. Indie films, long relegated to the margins of Philippine cinema, gained mainstream acceptance via the opening of two film festivals the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival and the Cinema One Originals. The aim of both festivals, apart from showcasing independently-produced films, is to fund the works of new and promising filmmakers who can present a unique and innovative mode of storytelling without the repressive control of mainstream movie studios, albeit with less than half of the usual mainstream budget. Some of the films produced by these festivals have been screened or have competed in various international film festivals. A few even enjoyed a commercial run at major movie houses in key cities in the Philippines.

The Hong Kong film industry entered its downturn in the mid-1990s, seeing a sharp fall of both annual production quantity and box office revenues from 1994, with a reduction in the number of film production companies, and a collapse of the cinema exhibition system being the major symptoms (Zhao, 2007: 346-348). There were small ups and downs during the last decade, yet, as a whole, the decline of the industry is incontrovertible.

In the years shortly before Chang Cheh's death, the not-insubstantial segment of the Internet populated by Hong Kong film enthusiasts lit up with the possibly apocryphal news that the director, who had made scores of dynamic martial-arts films from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, had proclaimed that he would retire only after he had directed his 101st film.1 Alas, Chang did not live to see that milestone: he died in 2002, nine years removed from directing his 97th and final film, Ninja in Ancient China. The fact that he or someone else allegedly suggested as the capstone to his career a bold numerical marker is oddly suggestive of a curious patterning that recurs in Chang's many films.

Thai royal anthem before artistic performances and sporting events. In the air conditioned and upholstered theaters and movie houses throughout the kingdom, the royal anthem is accompanied by a montage of images in celebration of the king's many achievements over the course of an illustrative reign. While these montages change from year to year, they are nonetheless spectacular (in the performative sense of the term) testaments to the power and the endurance of the royal image and the advanced filmmaking techniques employed to project it. As is customary for the duration of the anthem, the audience is expected to stand in order to formally and ritually pay respects to the king. The pacing of the sequence of images, paired with the reverential tempo of the anthem itself, allow for a moment of introspection before the presentation.

Globalization has inspired various research trajectories. Its impact is wide and pervasive, influencing disciplines such as the sciences, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and cultural studies. Cinema too has a strong relationship with the globalization from its emergence in the 1990s. The economic developments brought by globalization have led the Indian entertainment industry to scale new heights. Television, advertising, and film as interrelated spheres have expanded rapidly and comprise a significant and powerful industry today. This process identified Hindi popular cinema as "Bollywood," the product of the film industry based in Mumbai. As a result, Bollywood is established as a prominent culture industry in the country.

Temporality plays a crucial role in Western modernity. Concepts such as progress and industrialism are born from static notions of time; by tracing the development of what came before, and aspiring towards what lies ahead, the modern subject is continuously caught in the forward motion of a calculated mechanism designed to keep time.

In 1989, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's A City of Sadness (beiqing chengshi) won the Golden Lion Award in Venice. As the first Taiwanese movie that received the highest recognition by a major European film festival, A City of Sadness attracted serious media attention on the island. Nevertheless, Taiwan viewers' immediate reaction towards the film was polarized. For example, Liao (1999: 85-114) was bitterly disappointed that it did not seize the historical moment of democratization of the 1980s and produce a more aggressive Taiwanese nationalist discourse. On the other hand, Qi (2000: 331-332) argued that Hou's work has become a critical social text and thus it has inspired multidimensional discourses. A City of Sadness sparked a fierce cultural debate about Taiwan's past and its relationship with mainland China that is paralleled only by the passionate deliberation triggered by nativist literature in the 1970s.

New Taiwanese Cinema emerged in the 1980s in the face of a commercial industry in crisis, a loosening political climate at the end of the Cold War, and on the eve of Taiwan's lifting of martial law. Departing from the romantic themed "healthy-realism" and state-prescribed melodramatic narratives that characterized its predecessors, this new wave of Taiwanese films brought to the screen stories of ordinary people and their experiences amidst Taiwan's socialeconomic changes.1 As one of the leaders of New Taiwanese Cinema, Hou Hsiao-hsien partook in the making of the anthology The Sandwich Man (Erzi de dawanou, 1983) which, together with In Our Time (Guangyin de gushi, 1982), launched and defined the movement.

This paper addresses the issue of female masculinity in both 1930s' and 1980s' China. It involves heated cultural debates on "modern women" centered on a struggle to identify female subjectivity. On the one hand, it re-examines basic social norms, such as gender relations from a feminist perspective. On the other hand, it acknowledges democratic value that is no longer attached to the imaginative world created by men, but is rather endorsed by the call for gender equality, fighting against any new forms of male dominance.

Toshiro Mifune displays great economy of movement in his performance as Sanjuro in the sword-fighting action sequences of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962). They showcase the actor's agility and display his skills in the kendo tradition of samurai swordsmanship. As Sanjuro executes lethal slashes, he invades no space without need, and comically vanquishes opponents who appear gangly, uncoordinated, and excessive. Meticulously choreographed and assiduously rehearsed, the character's physical efficiency provides symmetry with his nimble intellect.

Film production started in India in 1896 almost simultaneously along with other filmmaking countries (Mazumdar, 2007: xv). The Indian film industry, both the regional and the mainstream, together spin out at least 1,000 films per year, according to an estimate (Thoraval, 2000: xi). According to the website of The International Indian Film Academy (IIFA), nearly 23 million people in India watch a film daily on an average (http://www.iifa.com/Indianfilmindustry. html).

The documentary, A State of Mind (2004, England), depicts North Korea's choreographed mass games, where the meticulously planned movements of human bodies create seamless lines and shapes in an infinite space. The spectacle of the mass games itself is compelling enough to draw viewers' immediate attention to a small, isolated country. Yet, the British filmmakers more intensely engage viewers' perceptions of the realities of North Korea by zeroing in on and following two schoolgirl gymnasts - Hyon Sun and Song Yun - as they practice for the 2003 mass games that celebrate the 55th anniversary of the founding of North Korea.

Love (qing) and rationality (li), love (lian'ai) and revolution (geming), and lust (se) and caution (jie) are perennial themes in Chinese literature and cinema. Generally speaking, they address two conflicting aspects of human emotions and awareness - a person's romantic feelings or lust for his/her lover and his/her moral or social responsibilities and obligations to the established rules of the communities or country in which he/she lives.

In Ang Lee's most recent film, Lust, Caution (2007), Lee's studentturned- spy heroine could best be described as a moviegoer (Fig. 1). Early in the film, her target wonders, "What do you like?" She responds, "Going to the movies." Lee provides us with evidence of his heroine's movie-going; Chiah Chih weeps through Intermezzo (1939) (Fig. 2), seeks solace in a showing of Penny Serenade (1941), and examines a poster advertising Suspicion (1941) (Fig. 3). Notably, Lee depicts his heroine absorbed and even moved to tears by American films, with differences of culture, nation, and language irrelevant to Chiah Chih's appreciation for Hollywood cinema. In contrast with Chiah Chih's passionate response to these extra-national films, the release of Lee's Chinese-language Lust, Caution left the majority of American critics cold.

Beijing undergoes another round of massive urban construction and destruction in the preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games. This essay focuses on two interrelated facets of this process of urban restructuring the erection of public monuments as symbols of China's globalization, modernization, and progress on the one hand, and the dislocation of local Beijing residents in order to clean up the city on the other. I examine the city's spatial transformation in three areas: public monuments, avant-garde art, and local documentary practice.

Perhaps no national cinema has more thoroughly and consciously explored the crises of its nation's history and culture than the Japanese. The collapse of the old warrior class in the 19th Century, the bitter struggle between traditional values and western economics, the crisis of identity that Japan faced, all led Japanese cinema to sword swaggering samurai to gangster films, disaster epics to primitive pasts, wartime propaganda to traumatic representations of defeat, nuclear holocaust, and occupation. Japan's preoccupation with cultural choices and Japanese identity has always managed to surface onto the film screen.

For Chinese born, Hong Kong-based film director Wong Kar-Wai, creating his first English-language film for an American audience, My Blueberry Nights (2007), was an artistic and cultural leap. However, this was not the first time Wong has taken a risk with his work. His eight previous feature films include a gang drama, a period romantic piece, a science fiction epic, and a tale of gay lovers living in Argentina. He frequently fuses Eastern and Western art cinema and frames his characters with stunning visuals (O'Hehir, 2008). However, film critics reviewing My Blueberry Nights found the film to be lighter and more sentimental than his previous films (Coleman, 2008; O'Hehir, 2008).

According to most sources, Connected (2008) is popularly known as the first Chinese remake of a Hollywood film. Although Hong Kong cinema has long borrowed and reworked Hollywood cinema in its own inimitable way as Herman Yau's Taxi Hunter (1993) does from its 1993 Hollywood source Falling Down (to name one film among many), Connected differs from this usual practice as being the first official and legitimate remake of a Hollywood film (He, 2010: 179-183). As Hilary Hongjin He has pointed out, Connected belongs to a new category of remake, namely those involving "legal purchase of the copyright and public acknowledgement of the original film before the release of the remake" (180).