Film in Contemporary Southeast Asia: Cultural Interpretation and Social Intervention

This book discusses contemporary film in all the countries of southeast Asia, exploring how films of different genres represent interventions in social issues and conflicts. It examines the social practices and ideologies which films textualise and oppose themselves to, the positions and counter-positions taken, the reasons for film-makers taking the positions they take, the response of different communities, and the extent to which these interventions are connected to global flows of culture and capital. The wide range of subjects covered include documentaries as political interventions in Singapore, political film-makers' collectives in the Philippines, and films about prostitution in Cambodia, patriotism in Malaysia, Islam in Indonesia and much more.