Asian Cinemas : A Reader and Guide

Asian cinema is an area of increasing interest in Anglo-US film studies while Asian films are now widely distributed and popular with western audiences. The fascination with Asian cinema must be examined in the context of a complex and often problematic relationship between western scholars, students, viewers and Asian films. This book, therefore, examines a number of detailed case studies (such as the films of Ozu, Bruce Lee, Hong Kong and Turkish cinema, Hindi melodramas, Godzilla films, Taiwanese directors and Fifth Generation Chinese cinema) and uses them in order to investigate the limitations of Anglo-US theoretical models and critical paradigms. By engaging the readers with familiar areas of critical discourse (such as postcolonial criticism, 'national cinema', 'genre', 'authorship' and 'stardom') the book aims to introduce within such contexts the 'unfamiliar' case studies which will be explored in depth and detail. The advantage of such an approach is that it works with the dynamics of familiarity/unfamiliarity and resists the temptation to construct Asian cinemas as a gallery of exotic objects that might be particularly fascinating but remain deeply distant and foreign. Book jacket.