[ecrea] Asian Cinema 29.2 is now available

Intellect is pleased to announce that /Asian Cinema/ 29.2 is now 
available! For more information about the issue, click here >> 
https://bit.ly/2P8NgES

*_Content
_*
*Editorial*

Authors: Gary Bettinson And Tan See Kam
Page Start: 171

*Where East-meets-West meets Asianization: Aesthetics, regionality and 
Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon
*
Authors: Allison Craven
Page Start: 175

As a term of description, ‘Asianization’ characterizes the impact of 
aesthetic and narrative influences from Asian cinemas on co-produced or 
American films since the late twentieth century. The ‘flexible 
citizenship’ of filmmakers and aesthetic traditions stemming from East 
Asian cinemas are seen to have transformed the global action cinema, in 
particular. Analyses of the orientalism of self/other relations 
inscribed in Asianized western films permeate reception, in spite of the 
problematic nature of the paradigms of Orient and orientalism. This 
article problematizes Asianization by referring to the Asian masquerades 
in Hollywood cinema in the pre-Second World War era, and the orientalism 
and ‘East meets West’ mythos that underpins a number of these films. The 
main case study, Lost Horizon, a blockbuster produced by Columbia 
Pictures in 1937 and directed by the Italian American filmmaker, Frank 
Capra, is a prototype imagining of ‘Asia’. It is a simulacra instilled 
through the trappings of costume, set, acted masquerade and elliptic 
narrative geographies, and facilitated by the racial proscriptions of 
the Motion Picture Association of America (Hays) Code of the era. The 
aesthetic discourse is marked, I argue, by duality whereby Asia is 
presented as both threat and paradise, a duality that resonates, if 
disparately, in the aesthetics of contemporary and twentieth-century 
Asianized films.

*Jia Zhangke and Chinese painting*

Authors: Peter Rist
Page Start: 189

This essay begins by reflecting on earlier research and writing 
conducted by the author on the relationship between Song (Sung) Dynasty 
landscape paintings and Chinese films, including the Fifth Generation 
work of Chen Kaige. Rist argues that one can also find echoes of ancient 
Chinese landscape painting in the films of ‘Sixth Generation’ director 
Jia Zhangke, including Platform (2000), Still Life (2006) and Mountains 
May Depart (2015), while one can also find visual connections between 
Jia’s films and more contemporary art, including propaganda posters and 
the large mural painting of his friend, Liu Xiaodong. Rist asks the 
reader to also recognize that Jia was an art student before he studied 
film, when he became enamoured with ‘realism’. In recent years Jia has 
become extremely interested in ecological issues that can be aligned 
with his cinematic treatment of the landscape.

*Action in tranquillity: Sketching martial ideation in The Grandmaster*

Authors: Wayne Wong
Page Start: 201

This article argues that the concept of wuyi 武意 (‘martial ideation’) 
forms the aesthetic core of kung fu cinema. Rather than focusing on the 
expressive amplification of emotion, martial ideation negotiates action 
and stasis through stabilization and eventually reaches a state of 
tranquillity. In The Grandmaster (Wong, 2013), such an ideational 
experience is sketched through the Buddhist notion of guan 觀 
(‘perspicaciousness’). Perspicaciousness is embodied by three ways of 
‘seeing’ in the mise-en-scène, including ‘listening bridge’ in martial 
arts performance, ‘looking back’ in narrative structure and ‘visioning’ 
in theme. In this light, Wong’s kung fu debut treats the southern 
hand-to-hand combat tradition not as a spectacle, but as an embodied 
knowledge that links kung fu practice with Chinese aesthetics and 
philosophy.

*Girlhood, bride-kidnapping and the postsocialist moment in Mángshān 
(Blind Mountain) (Li, 2007) and Boz Salkyn (Pure Coolness) (Abdyjaparov, 
2007)*

Authors: Kate Taylor-Jones
Page Start: 225

China and Kyrgyzstan are at the point of national development where the 
interplay between a national past and a globalized future is still hotly 
debated. Both nations are at the crux of the global questions related to 
the universal dilemmas posed by the collapse of the revolutionary 
socialist challenge to the hegemony of capitalism. This article will 
examine the interplay between gender and the vision of postsocialist 
modernity that is found in two films. Blind Mountain (Li, 2007) and Pure 
Coolness (Abdyjaparov, 2007) both present the respective stories of 
teenagers forced into marriage as part of a ‘tradition’ that is 
supported by the broader local community (as opposed to being the act of 
an individual male kidnapper). I will explore how the girl 
simultaneously represents a vision of a localized space while operating 
as an indicative sign of cultural difference. In short, she is the site 
of the transmission of ideals of gender and modernity between moments in 
national development. We, therefore, see the girl caught in the 
crosshair of modernity, sexuality, tradition, nostalgia and capitalism 
in communities that, as will be explored, are struggling to find a sense 
of self in the Asian postsocialist moment.

*The poetics of (social) mise-en-scène and transcendence in Li 
Shaohong’s Stolen Life*

Authors: Hing Tsang
Page Start: 243

This article is a formal analysis of the poetics of Li Shaohong’s Stolen 
Life (2005). It analyses issues of mise-en-scène from the perspective of 
composition, camera movement and choreography of characters within the 
frame. Taking in equal measure from David Bordwell’s classic work on 
mise-en-scène and Adrian Martin’s recent espousal of social 
mise-en-scène, I shall be arguing that Li’s work presents rich social 
description but also provides an account of agency and transcendence. My 
analysis of Stolen Life acknowledges Li Shaohong’s deployment of 
familiar tropes from popular storytelling, while giving emphasis to the 
distinct variations that she provides throughout the film.

*Real and slow: The poetics and politics of The Naked Island*

Authors: Lauri Kitsnik
Page Start: 261

A seminal film that presaged the 1960s boom of independent cinema in 
Japan, Shindō Kaneto’s The Naked Island (1960) also marked its 
director’s breakthrough to the international market. This article 
examines how the film’s depiction of primitive agrarian life, 
particularly the ‘authentic’ labouring bodies, relates to the notions of 
neorealism and ‘slow cinema’. Tracing its international influences, a 
comparison to Flaherty’s Man of Aran (1934) reveals how ‘poetical 
licence’ is an integral part of documentary film with ethnographical 
aspirations. Working outside the restrictive nature of the Japanese 
studio system, The Naked Island consolidated the director’s 
stripped-down and self-sufficient methods of independent filmmaking. 
After winning the Grand Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival, 
it also brought him a considerable following amidst the geopolitical 
tensions of the Cold War.

*An interview with Hong Kong sound designer Kinson Tsang*

Authors: Johnson Leow
Page Start: 275

This is an interview with late veteran Hong Kong sound designer Kinson 
Tsang about his experiences working in the Hong Kong film industry. 
Tsang entered the industry in the mid-1990s and quickly made a name for 
himself with award-winning soundtracks for The Stormriders (1999) and 
Purple Storm (2000). Since then, he has become the most successful sound 
designer in Hong Kong (in terms of awards), and his credits include 
Infernal Affairs (2002), Shaolin Soccer (2002), SPL (2005), Initial D 
(2006), Ip Man (2008) and The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014). He sadly 
passed away from cancer at age 59 on 7 September 2017. The present 
interview dates from 15 December 2015 and discusses Tsang’s experiences 
in the industry and his views on the sound aesthetics of Hong Kong 
cinema in the past few decades.

*Reviews*

Authors: Nicholas Godfrey And  Jasmine Nadua Trice
Page Start: 287

  * The 42nd Hong Kong International Film Festival, Hong Kong, 19
    March–5 April 2018
  * The End of National Cinema: Filipino Film at the Turn of the
    Century, Patrick Campos (2016)
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