Asian Cinema - Volume 7, Issue 2, 1995

The movie theatre was packed and I was wedged against the back wall looking at the naked screen, waiting for the movie to start - as I had so often in my life.

As for so many of my generation - who, like me, had profitably spent their youth in the dark -it was a moment of promise, the last of the ordinary before the projector's beam focused on the empty screen and a better, truer, more manageable world unreeled.

But this beloved anticipation which I so well knew from long childhood afternoons at the Sigma in far Ohio was now touched with concern as well. For I was no longer a child, twenty-three, this was the Gekijo Tokyo Kurabu in Asakusa, and I was transgressing.

It has become a common practice to preface any remarks about the cinema of a culture of which one is not a member with the reminder that one speaks as an outsider with all the limitations that that implies. This article will attempt to reconstruct the position of the outsider, to explain the strategic and tactical considerations of U.S. film distribution in Asia. The recognition, within film studies, of the complexity involved in delimiting the national has gone hand in hand with an emergent emphasis on globalization as an increasingly important way in which production and distribution are organized in "late capitalism." However the film industry has always been heavily reliant on an international organization of its markets. To understand the current influences of transnationalism on both the film industry andon cultural production within the contemporary nation-state, we must contextualize this recent transnationalism within a historical perspective as part of an on-going historical process.

Hollywood films had become an established part of China's urban culture by the 1920's, most notably in Shanghai, and this is where I have focused my research. My emphasis was on analyzing the role American films have played in the cultural context of Shanghai, for it is obvious they had a major cultural impact in a variety of ways. Hollywood films were a pervasive part of both consumer and film culture in Shanghai. A member of the audience might bring along his or her tailor to copy the latest fashion off the screen and filmmakers themselves could spend hours in the movie theatre to learn their craft from the newest American import

The function of a Japanese period piece, in print, on stage, or in film, is to discuss politically sensitive material and, at the same time, to evade government censorship. This is done, as Brandon has demonstrated, by a matching of past and present which places the current issue safely in the past.1 Between 1913 and 1939, the period piece perfected a rhetorical system matching historical periods and current-expressions of anachronistic--"anti-feudal" and "anti-militarist" sentiments derived from foreign sources. In literature, theater, and film, the modern period piece increased its reliance on modern language and foreign models of narrative and characterization, on what we can loosely call Western representational realism.

Malaysian cinema has undergone several phases since it was first introduced into the country in the early 1900s. As a twentieth century phenomenon, the cinema is an exciting medium and invites much exploration and creativity. Nevertheless, in a country like Malaysia, the cinema is also often a point of controversies and public debate. Whatever the course it takes, Malaysian cinema is still seen as unstable and risky business. Most observers have said that it is still faceless and in need of an identity. And thus the search for a Malaysian cinema is ever on-going.

This study explores and explains Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou's "Golden Touch" so as to shed light on the following questions in intercultural communication through films: (1) How is Zhang's film text related to its cultural context? In other words, what cultural identity and cultural mythologies portrayed by Zhang are highly evaluated by the Western filmmakers and critics? (2) How is Zhang's filmmaking style similar or different from the Western style? Why is his style appreciated and accepted by the Westerners? To this end, Bernardo Bertolucci's film "The Last Emperor," a version of Westerners' interpretation of Chinese culture in the current Western filmmaking style, is chosen to compare with Zhang's "Judou," because (1) both films were made at about the same time; (2) they have the same cultural context; (3) they are in the same form; and (4) they represent the filmmakers' professional levels.

Im Kwon-taek has been an important figure in the Korean film world for about thirty-five years, directing both commercial and artistic successes, tackling subjects that have led to controversy at times, and garnering a number of awards. Born in 1936 in the southern part of Korea, Im debuted with Dumangang-a Jalitkora (Good-bye! Duman River) in 1961. His films won the Grand Bell (Korea's top award) in 1978 (Jokbo or The Family Tree Book), 1979 (Gitbal Obnun Gisu or The Hidden Hero), 1981 (Mandara), 1982 (Abengo Gongsugundan or Abengo Air Green Berets), 1985 (Gilsodom) 1987 (Yonsan IIgi, or Diary of King Yonsan). Other films have won the Korea Paeksang Arts Grand Award (1976, Wangsimri; 1983, Angae Maeul) and Yongpyong Award (1987, Ticket). Mandara was selected to compete in the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival, as was Gilsodom in 1986.

Im Kwon-taek has been an important figure in the Korean film world for about thirty-five years, directing both commercial and artistic successes, tackling subjects that have led to controversy at times, and garnering a number of awards.

Lauded by many as one of the most exciting, visionary film artists to emerge in recent cinema, and vilified by others as a pretentious hack who creates pointless, obtuse trifles, there's no denying that the multi-award-winning director Wong Kar-wai is generating some of the most intense debate in the Hong Kong film community today. And because of this intense debate, it seems necessary that some discussion of his work be made.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the globalization of cinema in the context of the developing world. This is with a view towards understanding what the phrase "globalization of cinema" has come to stand for and why, and to see if there have been new developments in the area. This will be done with specific reference to the cinema of India and Hong Kong.

Lino Brocka: The Artist and His Times is a tribute to the most prolific and outspoken Filipino filmmaker of the past two decades. With a career that started in 1971 and ended in a tragic car accident in 1991, Brocka finished 64 full-length features and three short episodes in omnibus films (including an international project inspired by the signing of the Charter for the Rights of the Child which involved filmmakers like Euzhan Palcy, Jean-Luc Godard and Jerry Lewis). One should note that, aside from his frenzied schedule of filmmaking, Brocka directed a number of television series (many of these drama shows were 24-hour wonders); and to top it all, he found the time to honor his commitment to the PETA (Philippine Educational Theatre Association) and to various political activities, like the organization of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines. How he managed to do all this was an achievement in itself.

This ten-volume encyclopedia, published by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, is a landmark in the study of Philippine Art. The first two volumes focus on the Filipino peoples; the succeeding ones deal with the arts - architecture, the visual arts, dance, music, theatre, literature and film. The entire work provides a wealth of information for scholars of cultural studies; of particular interest to film students would be Volume VIII, Philippine Film.

"The heterogeneity of the multicultural classroom has an existential, political, and intellectual variety that challenges teachers and students to redefine and recast the meanings of solidarity and individual freedom. "(201) Serafina Bathrick and Louise Spence use that sentence to identify some of the problems and possibilities that are brought forth in their classroom, and I would suggest are shared by the several writers in Shared Differences: Multicultural Media and Practical Pedagogy, edited by Diane Carson and Lester D. Friedman.

Unless you are a close follower of British film culture or just happened to be in London during July or August 1993, chances are that you missed out on the publication of this dossier. Issued to accompany a 43-film retrospective at the British Film Institute's National Film Theater (which subsequently travelled to exhibition sites in Munich, Lausanne, Zurich, Sao Paolo, UCLA, Ontario and Chicago), the handsomely-produced New Chinese Cinema is a modest but still useful addition to the subject that can take its place on the shelf alongside Chris Berry's more substantial earlier collection, Perspectives On Chinese Cinema (BFI, 1991).