MCM 1503U, FALL 2013 1

MCM 1503U - POST 80’s ASIAN CINEMAS: FROM NEW WAVES TO THE DIGITAL GENERATIONS

Professor: Joshua Neves Office Hours: Weds. 3:30-5pm and by appointment; 155 George St., room 207 Email: [email protected]

Coordinates: Seminar: Thursdays, 4:00-6:20 (155 George St., rm. 106) Screenings: Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 7:00-11:00 p.m. (135 Thayer St., rm. 102)

Course Description: This course focuses on overlapping cinemas of East Asia (the three Chinas, Korea, Japan, etc.), among other Asian film and video cultures (India, Iran, Thailand, etc.). We will explore entangled "new waves," the afterlives of so-called “third cinema,” shifting genre, documentary movements, video amateurs and activists, as well as issues related to distribution, aesthetics, political society, temporal critique, and the growing field inter-Asian cultural studies. In short, beyond the "national" cinemas model, this course takes a comparative/regional look at the cinemas and film/video theories of the “new” Asia.

Readings: Required books available at the Brown Bookstore: 1) Kuan-hsing Chen, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010) 2) Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1965) 3) Bliss Cua Lim, Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009) Recommended: 4) Meaghan Morris, eds. (et al), Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imaginations in Action Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006)

All other readings are available online on our "Canvas" website .

Student Responsibilities and Grades:

1) SCREENINGS: Attentive attendance at the Tuesday or Wednesday (choose one – though you are encouraged to see the films more than once) night screenings is absolutely necessary for lectures, discussions and graded assignments. You should take notes, makes connections with the readings, and bring in talking points to each meeting. Screenings will take place in order listed on the syllabus on Tuesday and in reverse order on Wednesday.

2) READINGS/PARTICIPATION: Regular seminar attendance is mandatory. You should have done the reading by the day assigned since your preparedness is critical to productive seminar discussions. Each student will also be responsible for leading class discussion of two reading (as assigned), including posting written discussion questions on canvas for each presentation, and distributing a 1-2 page handout to the class.

3) READING RESPONSES: 10 Weekly responses (beginning 9/12/13) to the readings to be posted to the canvas site Wednesdays (by 7 p.m.). Reading responses allow you to share MCM 1503U, FALL 2013 2

your questions and reactions to the texts with the class before we meet. Ideally, these responses not only engage the readings, but also all the other blog postings. In general, they make our short time together more rigorous and focused. In a reading response, you may want to: • cite a passage or screening you found particularly challenging/intriguing and state why you found it so. • identify a larger topic or question that you think connects the different texts. • offer a critique of one or more of the pieces. • Or, since the readings for any given week engage the same topic in a different manner, you can also argue for one interpretation over another. They can be as long or as short as you think appropriate. Reading responses are worth 15% of your total grade so be sure to post each week. [Each student posts 10 readings responses + 2 sets of questions tied to their in-class reading presentations. You do not need to post during the first or last week].

4) WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: • One 5 page critical essay responding to a prompt handed out in class. Due in class on Thursday, October 3 • One seminar paper (~15 pages). During the 12th week of class (11/21), each student is to present to the class and hand in a paper proposal, which will consist of a brief description of her/his intended project (300 words) and a preliminary bibliography (5-8 items). Students should plan on meeting with the Professor in office hours prior to week eleven to discuss their final research topic. Seminar Paper is due in Professor’s mailbox (at 155 George St) by 4pm on Monday, December 16

Students will also be responsible for 10 minutes presentations of their final papers during our final meeting on December 12, 2013 (or as scheduled *depending on class size).

5) GROUP PRESENTATION / PROJECT: Seminar will be broken into groups for a collaborative papers/presentations on topics selected in conjunction with the Professor. In addition to 20-minute in class presentations each group will hand in a 2-3 page outline. Presentations will take place in weeks 9 and 10.

FINAL GRADE: weekly responses 15% participation (+ 2 class presentations) 15% group presentation 15% 5 page critical analysis 15% final seminar paper 40%

Note: you must post all responses and assignments and participate in the group presentation to pass the course. (That is, you cannot decide to take a zero in one of these assignments and let the four others carry your grade.)

*Important note about all assignments: Please be aware that plagiarism and unauthorized collaboration are extremely serious offenses. The Academic Code explaining Brown’s principles of academic integrity (and the repercussions for violation) can be found on the web at: .

MCM 1503U, FALL 2013 3

Schedule:

Week 1. Introduction

R 9/5 Course Introduction Handouts: Rajadhyaksha, “From Mumbai to Bihar”; Chen Kuan-hsing and Chua Beng-huat, “Introduction”

Screening: Golden Slumber (Davy Chou, France/Cambodia, 2010, 100 min)

*Recommended screening: A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996, Iran/France, 78 min) *Part of the weekly MCM Cinematheque series, 6pm, Friday, September 6, 135 Thayer St., room 101.

Week 2. National Cinemas and the “Non-West” R 9/12 Croft, “Concepts of National Cinema”; “Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, “The Difficulty of Being Radical”; Morris, “Introduction” to Hong Kong Connections; Srinivas, “Hong Kong Action Film and the Career of the Telugu Mass Hero” in Hong Kong Connections;

Screening: Close-up (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1990, 100 min); Once Upon a Time in China I (Tsui Hark, Hong Kong, 1991, 134 min);

Week 3. On Violence and National Culture

R 9/19 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; Chen, “Taiwanese New Cinema”

Screening: City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan, 1989, 157 min)

Recommended: The Battle of Algiers (Gille Pontecorvo, Italy, 1966); 100 Years of Japanese Cinema (Nagisa Oshima, Japan, 1994); 2009 Lost Memories (Lee Si- myung, South Korea, 2002)

Week 4. Waves, Thirds, Parallels, and Accents

R 9/26 Wollen, “Godard and Counter Cinema”; Desser, “Introduction” and “Night and Fog in Japan”; Sarkar, “Theory of Third World Cinema”; Naficy, “Introduction: Situating Accented Cinema”

Recommended: Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino “Towards a Third Cinema”

Screening: Night and Fog in Japan (Nagisa Oshima, Japan, 1960, 107 min); Pratidwandi [aka Adversary] (dir. Satyajit Ray, India, 1970, 110 min);

Recommended: Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960, 87 min); Stray Bullet [Obaltan] (Yu Hyun-mok, South Korea, 1960, 110 min); Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Cuba, 1968, 96 min)

MCM 1503U, FALL 2013 4

Week 5. (Dis)Appearance [*Paper 1 due in class]

R 10/3 Anderson, chapters 1-3 from Imagined Communities, 1-46; Chow, “Visuality, Modernity, and Primitive Passions”; Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, 1-36; Reynaud, “Chinese Cinema”

Recommended: Dai Jinhua, “Order/Anti-Order: Representation of Identity in Hong Kong Action Movies” in Hong Kong Connections

Screening: Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige, China, 1984, 89 min); Happy Together (Wong Kar- wai, Hong Kong, 1997, 96 min)

Recommended: A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, Hong Kong, 1986): Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, China, 1987); Seventeen Years (Zhang Yuan, China, 1999); Red Persimmons (Shinsuke Ogawa and Peng Xiaolian, Japan, 2001)

Week 6 Decolonization, De-Cold War, Deimperialization [*reschedule]

R 10/10 Chen, Asia as Method (“Introduction” and chapters 2-4); Kim, “Introduction” and “Mea Culpa: Reading the North Korean as Ethnic Other”

Screening: Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik, Philippines, 1977, 95 min); JSA: Joint Security Area (Park Chan-wook, South Korea, 2000, 110 min)

Recommended: Boat People (Ann Hui, Hong Kong, 1982); Wedding in Galilee (Michel Khleifi, Israel//Palestine, 1987); Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang Wen, China, 2000)

Week 7 Other Politics

R 10/17 Chatterjee, “The Politics of the Governed”; Chen, chapter 5 in Asia as Method, (211-256); Jaffrelot, “The Rise of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt”; Rajadhyaksha, “Indian Cinema”

Screening Omkara (Vishal Bhardwaj, India, 2006, 155 min)

Recommended: Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung, Vietnam/France, 1995); Xiao Wu (Jia Zhangke, China, 1997); Dil Se (Mani Ratnam, India, 1998);

Week 8 Asian Video Cultures

R 10/24 *TBD

*no seminar meeting this week, instead attend Asian Video Cultures Conference: >You are required to attend Paromita Vohra screenings of Partners in Crime (India, 2011, 94 min) on Thurs. October 24th in Martinos Auditorium >You are encouraged to attend conference panels/discussions on October 25-26 (details will be provided closer to the event)

MCM 1503U, FALL 2013 5

Week 9 DV, Documentary and Memory

R 10/31 Boyle, “Trauma, Memory, Documentary”; Halbwach selections from On Collective Memory; Berry and Rofel, “Alternative Archive”

Recommended: Zhang, “Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’”

Screening: S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Rithy Panh, Cambodia, 2003, 101 min); Meishi Street (Ou Ning and Cao Fei, China, 2006, 85 min)

*Group presentations 1

Week 10 Allegories

R 11/7 Lippit, “Universes” and “Phantom Cures: Obscurity and Emptiness”; Jameson, “Remapping Taipei”; Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy”;

Screening: Maborosi (Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan, 1995, 109 min); Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2004, 125 min)

Recommended: The Terrorizers (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 1986); The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 1998); Peppermint Candy (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, 2000, 127 min); Suzhou River (Lou Ye, China, 2000, 140 min); Last Life in the Universe (Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand, 2003)

*Group presentations 2

Week 11 New Culture Industries

R 11/14 Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”; Chua, “Consuming Asians: Ideas and Issues” (1-18); Choi, “Of the East Asian Cultural Sphere”; Liang, “Piracy, Creativity, and Infrastructure”

Screening The Supermen of Malagoan (Faiza Ahmad Khan, India, 2008, 65 min); My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-yong, South Korea, 2001, 123 min)

Recommended: Fireworks (Takeshi Kitano, Japan, 1997); That’s the Way I Like It (Glen Goei, Singapore, 1998); Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng, Thailand, 2000); Big Shot’s Funeral (Feng Xiaogang, China, 2001)

Week 12 Immiscible Temporalities [*Paper proposals Due]

R 11/21 Lim, Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique; Sardar, “On the Political Economy of the Fake”

Screening: Rouge (Stanley Kwan, 1988, Hong Kong 93 min); Ju-On: The Grudge (Takeshi Shimizu, 2002, Japan, 92 min)

MCM 1503U, FALL 2013 6

Week 13 Thanksgiving break

R 11/28 **no class

Screenings: **no screenings

Week 14 Contact, Visibility, and the New Asia(s)

R 12/5 Spivak, “Responsibility”; Kim, “Genre as Contact Zone”; Berry and Farquhar, “The National in the Transnational”; Chow, “Framing the Original: Toward a New Visibility of the Orient”

Screenings: Mee Pok Man (Eric Khoo, 1995, Singapore, 98 min); Still Life (Jia Zhangke, China, 2006, 111 min)

Week 15 Conclusion and Final Presentations

R 12/12 *Final Presentations Screenings: *TBD [Class curated screening]

**Seminar papers due in Professor’s mailbox (at 155 George St) by 4pm on Monday, December 16, 2013

Selected Bibliography

Baumgartel, Tilman, ed. Southeast Asian Independent Cinema (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012) Berry, Chris, Nicola Liscutin, and Jonathan D. Mackintosh, eds. Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes (Hong Kong: Hong University Press, 2009). Berry, Chris, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue, eds. Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). Berry, Chris, Lu Xinyu and Lisa Rofel, eds. The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010) Berry, Michael. Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Chen Kuan-Hsing, ed. Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1998). Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). Chua Beng-Huat and Koichi Iwabuchi, eds. East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing the Korean Wave (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008). MCM 1503U, FALL 2013 7

Desser, David. Eros Plus Massarcre: An Introduction to Japanese New Wave Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). Dirlik, Arif, ed. What is in a Rim: Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998). Durovicová, Natasa and Kathleen Newman. World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2010). Hill, John and Pamela Church Gibson, eds. World Cinema: Critical Approaches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Iwabuchi, Koichi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). Jameson, Frederic. The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). Kim, Kyung-hyun. Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema in the Global Era (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). Kunci Cultural Studies Center. Videochronic: Video Activism and Video Distrubtion in Indonesia (Collingwood, Australia: Engage Media, 2009). Lobato, Ramon. Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution (London: Palgrave, 2012) Miyoshi, Masao and H.D. Harootunian, eds. Japan in the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). Paquet, Darcy. New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves (London: Wallflower, 2009). Pines, Jim and Paul Willeman, eds. Questions of Third Cinema (London: BFI, 1989). Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Spivak, Gayatri. Other Asias (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2008). Stokes, Lisa Odham and Michael Hoover. City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema (London: Verso, 1999). Sundaram, Ravi. Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism (New York: Routledge, 2010). Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, and Darrell William Davis, eds. 2008. East Asian Screen Industries. London: British Film Institute. Yip, June. Envisioning Taiwan: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). Wang, Hui. The Politics of Imagining Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Wang, Shujen. Framing Piracy: Globalization and Film Distribution in Greater China (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). Zhang Zhen, ed. The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).