Volume 25, Issue 2-3 / February–March 2021

Asian Cinema

This issue focuses on cinema from the Asian continent, including India, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Iran (many people forget Iran is actually part of the Asian continent) and Mainland China. Hong Kong is covered with four articles, two interviews curated by Kristof Van Den Troost with Vincent Chui and Nora Lam, and two essays on In the Mood for Love, one (by David Menard) a close reading of it as a postmodern Chinese melodrama, and the other (by myself) offering a gendered reading of the classic romance. Gender is also at the heart of Tim Brinkhof’s analysis of Bong Joon-ho’s highly feted Parasite, offering a critique of its gender politics. Patrick Galvan looks at the tragic career of one of China’s most important actresses, Ruan Lingyu. Daniel Garrett writes a thematic analysis of Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly and how different forms of government (liberal, conservative, secular, religious, etc.) impact personal freedoms and rights. The cinema of India is featured in two articles, an industry-based study of how OTT (Over-the-Top) platforms are shaping the landscape of ‘New Television’ in India and how the content of new TV shows are starting to reflect the younger viewing demographic (by Kajal Parmar, Manisha Pandit). And an analysis how the 2018 film Birha (aka Absence, Ekta Mittal) makes an uneasy fit within the “Slow Cinema” movement because of how it offers a more “disjointed” rather than unified narrative experience. And Douglas Buck looks back at some reasons why the Americanized version of Gojira (1954), Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), had such a strong impact on a post-war American audience. (Donato Totaro, David Hanley, eds.)