This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema within the transnational context. It addresses several urgent and pertinent issues such as the distribution and exhibition practices of East Asian genre films, intra-regional creative flow of screen culture, and genre’s creative response to censorship. The volume expands the scholarly discussion of the rich heritage and fast-changing landscape of filmmaking in East Asian cinemas. Confronting the complex interaction between genres, filmic narrative and aesthetics, film history and politics, and cross-cultural translation, this book not only reevaluates genre’s role in film production, distribution, and consumption, but also tackles several under-explored areas in film studies and transnational cinema, such as the history of East Asian commercial cinema, the East Asian film industry, and cross-media and cross-market film dissemination.
Author(s): Lin Feng, James Aston
Series: East Asian Popular Culture
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 266
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Introduction
References
East Asian Film Genre in a Transnational Age
Rapidly Shifting Landscapes: Two Case Studies in the UK Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese Language Films in the Twenty-First Century
A Brief History of Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese Language Films in the UK
Case Study 1: CRIME: Hong Kong Style
Case Study 2: Back to the Multiplex
References
East Asian Noir: Transnational Film Noir in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong
What Is Film Noir?
Film Noir in Asia
Cinematic Flows Between Japan and Korea
Cinematic Flows Between Hong Kong and Korea
Conclusion
References
The Wolf Is Coming: Genre Hybridity in the Contemporary Chinese Blockbuster
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Chinese Genre Filmmaking
Genre Hybridity and the Chinese Blockbuster
Further Genre Adventures of the Chinese War Film
End Coda: South Korean Cinema and the Rise of a Global Blockbuster
References
Development of Genre film and Film Genre in East Asia Cinemas
Fantasy, Vampirism and Genre/Gender Wars on the Chinese Screen of the Roaring 1920s
The Culture of Vampirism in the Roaring 1920s of China
Reading the Cave as a Chinese Vampire Film
Genre/Gender Wars in the Roaring 1920s
Conclusion
References
Premodern History and the Contemporary South Korean Period Blockbuster
The Period Film in Korean Cinema History
Representing Premodern History in Postmodern Korea
Conclusion
References
Chinese Censorship, Genre Mediation, and the Puzzle Films of Leste Chen
The Great Hypnotist
Battle of Memories
Conclusion: Certainties Disappear
References
The Politics of Genre Space
Critiquing New Generational Japanese Horror: “Youthful Fatalisms, Old Aesthetics”
The History and Development of Ero-guro-nansensu
Understanding Ero-guro-nansensu After the Interwar Period
Current Contexts and Contemporary Ero-guro-nansensu in Film
Conclusion
References
Genre and Censorship: The Crime Film in Late Colonial Hong Kong
Process, Context and Discourse
Censorship and Genre in Post-War Hong Kong
Political Censorship and the 1988 Film Censorship Ordinance
Coda: Category III and the Censors’ Discursive Power
References
Old Shanghai and Film Noir Cross Over
Making Shanghai Noir: Heibang Film as a (Sub-)Genre Interrogating Urbanisation
Adventure in a Noir City: The Contemporary Reconstruction of Old Shanghai on the Big Screen
Gendering Noir Space: From the Post-colonialist to the Post-socialist
Conclusion
References
Index
