Description
Book SynopsisAfter the end of World War II when many Southeast Asian nations gained national independence, and up until the Asian Financial Crisis, film industries here had distinctive and colourful histories shaped by unique national and domestic conditions.
Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945-1998) addresses the similar themes, histories, trends, technologies and sociopolitical events that have moulded the art and industry of film in this region, identifying the unique characteristics that continue to shape cinema, spectatorship and Southeast Asian filmmaking in the present and the future. Bringing together scholars across the region, chapters explore the conditions that have given rise to today’s burgeoning Southeast Asian cinemas as well as the gaps that manifest as temporal belatedness and historical disjunctures in the more established regional industries.
Trade Review"Sharing a critical interest in examining the "national" in Southeast Asian cinemas,
Postcolonial Hangups [Amsterdam University Press, 2021] and
Southeast Asia on Screen make use of distinctly different methodologies and focus on diverse geopolitical regions and their cinemas. The two books expand the limits of Southeast Asian, Asian, national, and postcolonial cinema as well as lend insights to film aesthetics. Both books have incorporated valuable and new perspectives with much-appreciated historical depths. Invested readers will surely benefit from the vast array of film texts examined as well as the knowledge and critical perspectives offered by these specialists of the field."
- Min Hui Yeo,
Global Storytelling 1.2 (2022)
"This anthology from Amsterdam University Press expands the limited scholarship on South East Asian cinema by featuring film critics and historians based outside North America, Europe and Australia. Amid moves toward diversity and decolonization, its spotlight on the work of South East Asian film experts in the greater Asia-Pacific region is praiseworthy. [...]
Southeast Asia on Screen is a rich, timely resource for delving into an exciting, burgeoning field of study that illustrates their continued resonance and urgency."
- Elmo Gonzaga, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
South East Asia Research, September 2021
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945-1998) (Khoo)
Section 1. Independence and Post-WW2 Filmmaking: Nation-building, Modernity and Golden Eras (Ainslie)
Chapter 1. A Nation Imagined Differently: The Critical Impulse of 1950s Indonesian Cinema (Yngvesson and Alarilla)
Chapter 2. The 1950s Filipino Komiks-to-Film Adaptation During the Studio Era (Arriola)
Chapter 3. Pearl Tears on the Silver Screen: War Movies and Expanding Burmese Militarism in the Early Independence Years (Ferguson)
Chapter 4. Gender, Nation and Spatial Mobility in ON TOP OF THE WAVE, ON TOP OF THE WIND (Nguyen)
Chapter 5. Spectacularity of Nationalism: War, Propaganda and Military in Indonesian Cinema During the New Order Era (Irawanto)
Section 2. Key directors (Khoo)
Chapter 6. Two Auteurs in the Indonesian Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s: Sjuman Djaya and Teguh Karya (Hanan and Soehadi)
Chapter 7. Hussain Haniff and the place of the auteur in popular Malay cinema (Driskell)
Chapter 8. Ratana Pestonji and Santi Vina: Exploring the 'Master' of Thai Cinema During Thailand's 'American Era' (Ainslie)
Section 3. The Popular (Barker)
Chapter 9. Locating Mike de Leon in Philippine Cinema (Campos)
Chapter 10. Nora Aunor vs Ferdinand Marcos - Popular Youth Films of 1970s Philippine Cinema (Sebastiampillai)
Chapter 11. Transnational Exploitation Cinema in Southeast Asia: The Cases of Indonesia and The Philippines (Barker and Imanjaya)
Chapter 12. Mapping Regional Ambivalence and Anxieties in THEY CALL HER=CLEOPATRA WONG (Siddique)
Chapter 13. The Boonchu Comedy Series: Pre-90s Thai Localism and Modernity (Khuankaew)
Index
