Asian Film

Borrowing from film and filmmaking styles, techniques and devices that manipulate spectators ’ attention and experience, this paper proposes an approach to inform design of games and gameplay to manipulate player’s focus of attention and encourage contemplation – in design features, characters, story elements, etc. or even break the player’s engaged attention in the game/virtual world altogether – to provide meaning, experience and opportunities for learning. Focusing on film styles alternative to the continuity style of Hollywood filmmaking, we discuss examples of design for contemplative gameplay in game-based learning environments/serious games, machinima and augmented and mixed reality games in previous, current and future projects. We propose that one goal of game design is to establish a rhythm between contemplation and engagement, and the appropriate rhythm is determined largely by a game’s genre, platform and/or narrative.

For a long time, Hollywood has been interested in remaking films
of different countries. On the level of transnational cinema, a remake
can be considered as borrowing ideas, and adaptation of a work of one
cultural background to another society and country in modern period of
globalization. Hollywood tends to produce remakes of East Asian films
in 21st century while it had done mostly of European films in the
previous century. Among Hollywood remakes of East Asian films, the
case of Oldboy is noticeable. Korean Oldboy and its US remake made
by Spike Lee are two films which expressed the same feeling and
pursue of revenge in the same circumstances, but at the same time two
directors showed to spectators two different main heroes through
different narration and heroes' different representation within the
cinema. To discuss about two films, researchers of this article refer to
concepts of puzzle film studies, which deal with complex non-linear
narrative strategies in contemporary art films. This study examines and
compares two films in terms of complex narrativity, evolution of main
characters from an ordinary human to a monster, and the removal of
monstrosity in the conclusion.

During the past decade South Korea, Japan and China (PRC) have made significant strides in international film exports and their film industries have often been utilized as tools of cultural diplomacy. This chapter analyzes some of the most successful government policies, contrasts common cinematic themes in popular national films and evaluates films’ soft power potential in advancing diplomatic agendas. By examining the dominant cinematic narratives and offering a brief historical overview of their respective film industries, the research traces the most common trends and explores how popular films shape the perception of producers’ culture abroad. The issues of soft power and its implications for the relationship between the dominant genres and the idea of nation are discussed.

In recent years, we have witnessed a rising international interest in the “new waves” of East Asian cinema–the new waves as “national cinemas” that offer an alternative to the ever-increasing dominance of the mainstream. Consequently, this course will pay primary attention to this re-conceptualization of the new wave as a critical and aesthetic problem. How has the model of a national cinema been re-interpreted from its initial European iteration, and how has it informed both the production and reception of East Asian cinema? How has the question of constructing a national identity through cinema been promoted or challenged by the various new waves with a radicalization of both content and form? Focusing on internationally acclaimed auteurs of Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea, this course will address key historical issues that have shaped the contours of East Asian cinema from the post-war to the contemporary moment. With a close formal analysis of each film, we shall see how the radicalization of film-making is intricately intertwined with not only attempts to assert an identity in the midst of de-colonization, modernization and globalization, but also endeavors to move beyond the binds of nationalism via issues of class, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity.

From Cape No. 7 (2008) to Monga (2010) to the recent Night Market Hero (2011), domestically produced Taiwanese films have been generating great interest both locally and internationally. These three films have broken the local film “curse” and earned more than NT$100 million (US$3.4 million) at the local box office. This is phenomenal as it is rare for locally produced films to earn more than NT$50 million (US$1.7 million) domestically. This new influx of popular Taiwanese domestic films has altered the outlook of Taiwan National Cinema. The most prominent film from this group is Monga which is directed by Niu Chen-zer, Doze. The story begins with how Mosquito was recruited into the “Prince’s Gang” by Monk, Dragon, Monkey and A-po. Eventually, the sworn brothers became enemies and killed each other because of betrayal, deceit and revenge. It is a nationally and internationally acclaimed film which was nominated in numerous award categories and won several awards in both local and international film festivals. This paper argues that Monga has created a new type of “more local” Taiwan National Cinema that is preoccupied with Taiwan’s culture and identity. At the same time, the locally produced films are “more global” as they are popular and marketable locally and internationally. In this paper, the “more local” term refers to a few factors. Firstly, “more local” refers to the reception of the film. When the film is considered “more local”, it performs well at the domestic box office. Secondly, the film is “more local” if it engages with any issues that is associated with Taiwan’s culture and identity. As a result of the emphasis on local content, the film becomes “more global” as it is differentiated from other Asian films. To establish Monga’s status as a local film with global impact, Monga’s distinctive portrayal of Taiwanese gangsters is compared to popular Hong Kong gangsters in the Young and Dangerous series. Finally, the paper ends with a comparison of Monga with other similar films like Cape No. 7 and Night Market Hero to prove that Monga represents a new type of “more local” and “more global” films which have revitalized the Taiwan National Cinema by capturing the local and international attention.

浙江大学，浙江省传播学年会
乔西 Dr.  Jossalberto Briceno Saenz 复旦大学
2014.10月.25日

不向梦想喊“CUT”
——年轻非专业导演伍姣的电影之路
乔西 Jossalberto Briceno Saenz 复旦大学
惨白的脸颊，血泪，惊叫，逃离......这些重口味的恐怖情节，却是出自一位清新女孩的摄像机下。伍姣，一位24岁法语专业的女生，从来没有任何电影制作拍摄方面的专业训练，制作出的独立电影，品质却不在电影公司制作之下，一个可爱女孩，立志拍出真正的恐怖电影，如此反差，是否能成为国内电影界的一支新力量？

This essay for the international Blu-ray release of Dwein Baltazar's 'Oda sa Wala' explores the resonances of the film with Thai, Filipino, and Southeast Asian horror as well as Aureus Solito's music video for the Pinoy rock band Eraserheads' classic 'Ang Huling El Bimbo.'

Artícuo publicado en el libro de memorias de un congreso 10-25-2014
Universidad de Zhejinag facultad de Medios Masivos de comunicación



不向梦想喊“CUT” ——年轻非专业导演伍姣的电影之路
乔西 Jossalberto Briceno Saenz 复旦大学
2014.10月.25日

惨白的脸颊，血泪，惊叫，逃离......这些重口味的恐怖情节，却是出自一位清新女孩的摄像机下。伍姣，一位24岁法语专业的女生，从来没有任何电影制作拍摄方面的专业训练，制作出的独立电影，品质却不在电影公司制作之下，一个可爱女孩，立志拍出真正的恐怖电影，如此反差，是否能成为国内电影界的一支新力量？

很少的人真正在做自己爱好的事情，但是你的梦想是什么？有一个家庭，有一份工作？那爱好是否重要呢？很多人认为现实的东西就是工作和家庭。爱好和爱情有时候被认为是不现实的东西。但是人之所以区别于人的特点，就在于有不同的想法。这就是伍姣的想法，她把自己的爱好置于想法之中，并致力于实现。也可以说，这个爱好其实是深入骨血的梦想。她并不是一个电影专业的学生，但是爱好让她在电影中变得专业。没有足够的钱（每个月收入不超过两千），没有足够的时间（要学习自己的专业），但是在这样的条件下，她仍然坚持攒钱买了电影拍摄需要的装备，并学习电影拍摄知识用于实践。她还没有一份好的工作，没有一个家庭，这在很多人的眼里都认为她不现实。但是她一直在想除了工作和家庭，还有什么能让她的人生变得有意义，有价值呢？她热爱电影，希望成为电影导演，因为电影是她的梦想，她不会向梦想叫停。

The 3rd edition of MEMORY! International Film Heritage Festival took place from May 29 to June 7, 2015 reaching an attendance level of 15 000 spectators, with represents an increase of 25% compared to previous main edition in June 2014. 
54 classics from around the worlds around the year’s theme WOMEN were presented in Yangon, most of them never released in the country.
International Guests of Honors highlighted the festival in Myanmar, in particular actresses Catherine Deneuve and Michelle Yeoh, Cheng Pei Pei and Marrie Lee, Daw Swe Zin Htaik, Daw Khin Thida Htun and Daw Nwe Nwe San and several international directors Olivier Assayas, Lana Gogoberidze and Salomé Alexi and Myanmar director Daw Thin Thin Yu.
International delegations from America, Europe and Asia took part  actively to the festival.

Asian thought, from Hinduism and early Buddhist philosophy up to Japanese poetry, uses the dream metaphor as a means of expressing different modes of human existence. Kim’s new film Dream develops a plotline determined by adventurous splits of identities and their subsequent fusions. Ran acts like Jin’s avatar in a Second Life virtual space. What looks like a film about dreams and waking life and its imbrications is, in reality, more complex because a supplementary aspect is introduced into the symmetrical dream-reality system through the acts of the dreamless, sleepwalking Ran. The sleepwalker’s state of consciousness is special, it is even more mysterious than that of the dreamer, which necessitates a more refined interpretation of the relationship between Jin’s and Ran’s respective states of awareness. “The person of non-mind sees the objects of the world as neither real nor unreal, as neither independent substances nor dreams or illusions,” writes Thomas Kasulis (1981: 44). With the help of her no-mind, Ran overcomes the distinction between Jin’s dream (that she acts out) and the reality in which she is acting.

Drawing on the scholarship on how infrastructures facilitate the borderless mobility of transnational flows across commodity supply chains in a time of dispersed sovereignty, this article analyzes spatial depictions of interlinked nodes for finance, extraction, and logistics, which define the operations of a capitalist world system centered in metropolitan areas in the Asia-Pacific region. Looking at the emergent genre of the planetary network blockbuster, which comprises superhero, science-fiction, and spy narratives that transpire across an array of transpacific landscapes in the strenuous effort to confront a global threat, it examines its conventional audiovisual construction of setting based on variances of material progress. Diverging from normative critiques of techno-orientalist portrayals of excessive East Asian wealth, which tend to be concerned with racialized bodies, this article uncovers how the visualization of global inequalities rests on interreferential urban iconographies that juxtapose the order, prosperity, and dynamism of ‘industrialized’ Northeast Asian capitals Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, and Hong Kong with the illegality, vulnerability, and squalor of ‘emerging’ Southeast Asian megacities Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, and Ho Chi Minh City. Focusing on recurrent fragmentary representations from sequels and spinoffs of the Bond, Bourne, Marvel, and Transformers franchises that map intraregional supply chains of monetized biomedical, robotic, and cybernetic technology, it explores how infrastructural imaginaries of skyscrapers, laboratories, mines, factories, powerplants, warehouses, roads, and ports can reorder hierarchies of speculative investment, urban development, scientific innovation, and military security.

In the second part of Mediapolis Journal's 'slum' series, Elmo Gonzaga probes the ethics and violence of journalistic, cinematic, and gamified images of poverty and precarity in Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, North America, and Western Europe: "While these gripping images are driven by an ethical imperative to protect human dignity through their accounting of the social milieu, they reproduce dominant global tropes of poverty and suffering... The multimodal, transborder circulation of these iconographies seems less likely to propagate democratic ideals of cosmopolitan diversity than dominant standards of material progress."

In one of Singapore filmmaker Tan Pin Pin’s more recent documentaries Snow City (2011), the camera patiently follows the first polar bear born in the tropics—Inuka—as he swims languorously in his icy tank. The scene, which cuts to an unrelated cityscape, seems arbitrary or flippant at first, especially for Tan, who is regarded as a serious documentarian. Yet, there is purpose to this perceived frivolity. Chasing Inuka similarly traipses through Singapore, using Tan’s postmodern and posthuman spatial perspectives, as its guide. Moving through six films, the chapter makes an argument for the significance of Tan’s accentuated montage process in highlighting the latent network of spaces across the city. It discusses the affective and “out-of-field” character of these spaces, which appear peripheral yet strategically augment her documentary subjects, and ultimately, undermine generalizations about Singapore’s spaces.

For those whose image of Viet Nam comes only from the reel projected by Hollywood, the version of that country that appears in Hong-An Truong's films may seem alien territory. Truong's colonial-era Viet Nam didn't exist by that name, but was partitioned by the French into ...

Amor à Flor da Pele (2000), de Wong Kar-Wai trabalha nas bordas dos núcleos duros da linguagem clássica do cinema a fim de arquitetar um estilo particular. Faz uso de todos os planos da cartilha clássica, mas se diferencia pela forma que emprega-os. Destacam-se: os planos gerais que garantem inteligibilidade e riqueza da profundidade dos espaços, ratificando o movimento em profundidade de campo das personagens; "Cortes de perfil" em momentos-chave dos protagonistas; O uso de "molduras" que criam quadros dentro do quadro para fins narrativos; Cortinas que funcionam como filtros e distorcedores de espaço; e finalmente o slow-motion que acentua o tempo psicológico da trama.

Abstract en Chino (idioma original): 摘要：自杀是一种现代社会普遍存在的问题，在不同的国家，不同的文化对于自杀的理解都不一样，而且媒体在对自杀问题进行报道时也有不同的偏重。实际上媒体可以是很多问题解决的一个很好的工具，包括自杀的问题。本文中，主要探讨了如何使漫画这种媒介方式成为防治和干预自杀的社会传播手段
Abstract en Español: Vivimos en un mundo lleno de películas, si no queremos volver a ver la misma película todos los días, tenemos que saber criticar negativamente una obra famosa. La sociedad normal debe  aprender a hacer análisis cinematográficos y con ello el apreciar los diferentes generos, Terror y horros son generos difíciles de apreciar y necesita enseñarse a la sociedad a apreciarlos. El cine y los video son ahora algo muy común pero apesar de que hay mucho material de video la gente sigue pagando para ver una película de la cual ya conocen la historia, lo cual la convierte en “vieja”. Las empresas cinematográficas aprovechar las historias populares y más famosas para obtener ventas seguras, basta con sustituir el actor o director para dar la sensación de “nuevo”. La gente sabe que la historia no es el original pero sigue viendo la misma historia por famosa. Sin embargo, las películas de terror son una excepción a la regla de “lo ya visto como venta segura”, ya que si se conoce la historia y se sabe lo que sucederá en una película de terror ya no se sentirá el miedo que se busca probocar. Si quieres una película de terror taquillera la historia tiene que ser original. Las personas que pagan para ver una película de terror esperan que sea una nueva historia, no solo el uso de nuevos materiales y técnicas funciona dentro del mundo del terror. En éste artículo se analíza la importancia de una película de terror como genero en el cine y la importancia de saberlo criticar. El análisis del cine de terror es muy importante, pero por ignorancia los criticos de cine no muestran interes en explicar a la gente el cómo comprender o entender este genero. Al parecer los criticos de cine no quieren aceptar que el genero de terror sevende y  tambien el que es muy dificil realizarlo bien.

In December of 1997, the International Monetary Fund announced the largest bailout package in its history, aimed at stabilizing the South Korean economy in response to a credit and currency crisis of the same year. Vicious Circuits examines what it terms "Korea's IMF Cinema," the decade of cinema following that crisis, in order to think through the transformations of global political economy at the end of the American century. It argues that one of the most dominant traits of the cinema that emerged after the worst economic crisis in the history of South Korea was its preoccupation with economic phenomena. As the quintessentially corporate art form—made as much in the boardroom as in the studio—film in this context became an ideal site for thinking through the global political economy in the transitional moment of American decline and Chinese ascension. With an explicit focus of state economic policy, IMF cinema did not just depict the economy; it also was this economy's material embodiment. That is, it both represented economic developments and was itself an important sector in which the same pressures and changes affecting the economy at large were at work. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon's window on Korea provides a peripheral but crucial perspective on the operations of late US hegemony and the contradictions that ultimately corrode it.

The Japanese eroduction, known locally as the Pink Film (pinku eiga), stands out among its soft-core cousins in other parts of the world for its scale, intimate relationship to the mainstream industry, and its occasional ambition. Pink films are ultra-low budget, soft-core, 35mm narrative feature films. They emerged in the early 1960s and quickly became a significant portion of Japan’s annual output (between 100 and 700 films a year), showing triple bills in their own network of national theater chains. Their success was accomplished in the vacuum left by the crumbling studio system. Today, the industry is itself in its death throes, unable to compete with the more explicit home video market known as AV. Triple bills in air conditioned comfort can no longer compete with the privacy of home. Now is an opportune time to examine the history of the Pink Film, now on the cusp of its disappearance. With essays by Roland Domenig, Kimata Kimihiko, Kirsten Cather, Yuriko Furuhata, Julian Stringer, Andrew Grossman, Sharon Hayashi, Miryam Sas, Michael Arnold, Peter Alilunas and Donald Richie. Also features a fascinating collection of photographs from Tsuda Ichiro’s The Location.

Resumo: O olhar do filme é construído a partir de planos que valorizam a profundidade dos espaços e a presença/domínio dos personagens nos mesmos, sejam externos ou internos; faz uso de plongées para as diversas situações em que os personagens estão no chão, criando a noção de um observador que analisa os fatos abaixo da sua linha de olhar. O espaço urbano em Eu não quero dormir sozinho, mais que um lugar de passagem (como é percebido numa análise inicial da narrativa), é um lugar de afeto. Tsai constrói um olhar sensível destes locais enfatizando a relação deles com os personagens.

The introduction to this collection of multimedia essays on Maqbool and The Banquet argues that close examination of the films through a truly global array of appropriative strategies and cultural contexts can help combat the tendency to report on rather than analyze non-Western works and thus can also prevent Asian films from being seen as merely exotic and disconnected from Shakespeare scholarship. Especially valuable for Shakespeareans are the ways in which the two films refashion Hamlet, Gertrude, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and other characters to shed new light on the visceral and political experiences enabled by these Shakespearean tragedies.

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http://www.borrowers.uga.edu/1404/show

In one of Singapore filmmaker Tan Pin Pin’s more recent documentaries Snow City (2011), the camera patiently follows the first polar bear born in the tropics—Inuka—as he swims languorously in his icy tank. The scene, which cuts to an unrelated cityscape, seems arbitrary or flippant at first, especially for Tan, who is regarded as a serious documentarian. Yet, there is purpose to this perceived frivolity. Chasing Inuka similarly traipses through Singapore, using Tan’s postmodern and posthuman spatial perspectives, as its guide. Moving through six films, the chapter makes an argument for the significance of Tan’s accentuated montage process in highlighting the latent network of spaces across the city. It discusses the affective and “out-of-field” character of these spaces, which appear peripheral yet strategically augment her documentary subjects, and ultimately, undermine generalizations about Singapore’s spaces.

Jia nesse filme, como em outros, lança um olhar sobre o mundo real, sem precisar abrir brechas convencionais para a fabulação. Abre mão de todos os planos que condicionam passivamente o olhar do espectador (planos médios e primeiros planos) para ter o plano geral ou o "plano multifocal" como vetor de construção visual. Desenvolve a narrativa basicamente em longos planossequência de conjunto (com tudo em foco) que permitem ao espectador fazer a "decupagem" durante a experiência, deixando-o decidir o que deve ser acentuado ou ignorado, o tempo de apreensão e a forma de relacionar os elementos no quadro.

Mal dos Trópicos faz uso de recursos fílmicos clássicos modulados a serviço de uma estética sensorial. Escolhas de decupagem favorecem um espaço primordial para o olhar e dispositivos relacionados. É um filme sobre olhar e ser olhado. O espectador encontra-se implicado no filme a partir de planos em que os personagens olham para a câmera (ou parecem olhar). Planos-quadro permitem que o espectador faça recortes subjetivos, porém há a necessidade de investigação para compreensão minuciosa da narrativa.

Zhang Yimou’s films Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and Judou (1990) were widely criticised for historical misrepresentation, because the rituals they represent are invented. They also attracted unprecedented interest in Chinese film from Western audiences. Close analysis demonstrates how the rituals depicted in these films allegorically represent techniques of social power within 1990s. Further, the invention of ritual in these films disrupts the citationality of ritual’s performative mode, thereby disturbing traditional ideas of cultural representation and authenticity. In these ways, Judou and Raise the Red Lantern can be read as critical of PRC and can be seen to address the politics of cross-cultural engagement.