Asian Cinema - Volume 25, Issue 2, 2014

We live in transitional times, in which the weight of global power is markedly shifting towards Asia. In this context the meaning of the category ‘Asian’ is thoroughly in flux, negotiated and contested across multiple dimensions. In this light, is it possible, or even desirable, to speak about post-Asia? If so, what could it mean? Or is such talk perhaps premature? In this article, I consider three ways of thinking about the notion of post-Asia: the temporal, the spatial and the epistemological. In all these instances, we can observe that a genuinely post-Asian perspective has not yet emerged.

In Evans Chan’s latest documentary Datong: the Great Society (2011) on the life of would-be Qing Dynasty reformer Kang Youwei and his daughter Kang Tongbi in China, the United States and in exile in Sweden the device of theatrical performance is foregrounded, as it has often been in other documentary films by Chan. To those less familiar with Chan’s signature style the decision to employ stage actors rather than film actors, and to eschew the typical drama-documentary’s recourse to mimetic pictorial realism can defamiliarize. In this essay it will be argued that the notions of performance and theatricality that permeate much of this auteur director’s work, are congruent with both his film-making aesthetic and his intellectual pre-occupations.

Proof of the Man (人間の証明) is a 1977 Japanese film adapted from Morimura Seiichi’s detective novel of the same name. The film was dubbed and released in China as part of an extensive Sino-Japanese cultural exchange programme following the end of Cultural Revolution. The dubbed version gained immense popularity among the Chinese audience. The melodramatic plot of filial affection, the beautiful dubbed voice and the emotional theme song proved humane and healing for a traumatized audience of the post-Mao era. But a closer analysis reveals that the social critique embedded in the filmic text of Proof of the Man was rewritten and reinterpreted in the Chinese dubbing and viewing process. Both the translators and reviewers often dismissed, whitewashed or oversimplified racial tensions in the film. Very few noted that racial discrimination within Japan – an important subtext of the film – is a main cause of the filicide tragedy. I argue that it was not just ignorance of Japanese history that prevented Chinese reviewers from acknowledging the existence of racism in Japan, and that their belief that equated racial discrimination with class oppression and white supremacy was self-serving.

Through an analysis of popular combat films and television shows, this article argues that there has been a transformation in the representation of the hero-soldier in both China and Japan. Using theories of masculinity and nationalism, it suggests that recent Chinese films reveal a turn towards hybrid heroism-victimhood, increased focus on the emasculation of Japanese soldiers, and tensions between the market and the state. Meanwhile, Japanese films illustrate continued differences between the ambiguous mainstream and the straightforward nationalism of the right, albeit with an overall trend towards the rehabilitation of the problematic image of the soldier. Such shifts in the imagining of the soldier-hero demonstrate the ways in which Chinese and Japanese discourses on national identity have changed over time.

Released to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, The Founding of a Republic/Jianguodaye (Han and Huang, 2009, hereafter The Founding) was both a huge box-office success and cultural hit in mainland China in 2009. In contrast to previous mainstream films, from both the socialist and post-socialist eras, which were times of immense transformation to Chinese society, The Founding has a more commercial flavour as evidenced by its more nuanced approach to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) policies and ideology. This article aims to analyse The Founding and illustrate the novel devices employed by the CCP and the changing trajectory of official propaganda as the CCP attempts ideological control of the Chinese people. The examination begins with a brief review of the politically loaded phrases ‘mainstream’ and ‘mainstream film’, and then scrutinizes The Founding by decoding its production motives and processes; its unconventional approach to plot design and character building, and, in particular it focuses on the impact of celebrity participation in the movie. The article will show that the panoramic history depicted in the film incorporates official propaganda that merges with commercial devices very subtly, while the mainstream and orthodox ideology of the CCP, as reflected in the production of this film, becomes more neutral, natural and entertaining. By focusing on the use of celebrities in combination with a more personalized approach to historic events and people, the author argues that the commercial and critical success of The Founding is a prime example for future mainstream films in terms of breaking through the blockade of commercial blockbusters and reforming CCP policy in a number of ways. The article attempts to build links between the film and the society, the movie stars and the historical figures, the production and the reception, the market and the mainstream, and the art and the politics.

North Korean film, just like other art and cultural forms from this country, is either deemed mere propaganda and thus unworthy of critical scrutiny or simply viewed as one of few windows available to us through which we could peep into this secluded society. In fact, almost all writings on North Korean cinema deal with the ways in which political intentions and the personality cult are distributed through recurring themes, similar plots and archetypical characters. There has been virtually no room for film aesthetics when it comes to North Korean film. Challenging these myopic perspectives, this article aims to shed light on the poetics of North Korean Juche cinema – in other words, how stylistic patterning, filmic techniques and visual modes engender particular effects and serve specific purposes, placing the cinematization process of Juche ideology in conversation with political questions through the analysis of film theories developed in North Korea and filmic conventions of North Korean Juche films.

This interview covers the long career of veteran actress Lisa Lu Yan in American media and Chinese cinema. Lisa Lu began acting a decade after she relocated to America following the change of government in china. Thanks to Frank Borzage, she began her prolific career in American television and became the second Chinese actress in post-war cinema to co-star in The Mountain Road (1960) with James Stewart. Among the many well-known American television series she appeared in during the 1960s were Bonanza, Cimarron City, Checkmate, and Yancy Derringer. She also appeared alongside Richard Boone in the opening segements of Have Gun Will Travel for one season in the role of “Hey Girl”, one she made her own. She returned to Hong Kong to star in The Arch (1969), the first film directed by female director Tan Shu-shuan in 1969 and later appeared in The Shaw Brothers’ 14 Amazons (1971). Run Run Shaw then offered her the title role in Li Han-hsiang’s The Empress Dowager and its sequel. She later played the same role in the opening sequences of Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. Since then, she has continued her prolific career working in film, screen, and stage in America, China, and Taiwan.

The Asian Cinema Experience: Styles, Spaces Theory, Stephen Teo (2013) London: Routledge, 269 pp., ISBN: 9780415571463, h/bk, £85