Women in East Asian Cinema: Gender Representations, Creative Labour and Global Histories

Women in East Asian Cinema brings together new and emerging work to highlight and explore the understudied contributions of women to the films and creative industries of East Asia. It is a book which foregrounds the importance of re-historicising women’s creative labour in film, not just as actors on screen, but as voices who have steered the production, circulation and consumption of these films across global contexts. Over three sections, the book provides perspectives on gender representation in East and South-East Asian cinema; new explorations of women’s labour contributions as directors, screenwriters, and editors; and considerations of the contemporary circulation processes through which such work reaches global audiences. By recentring women’s film histories within the broader history of cinema and interrogating the geo-political boundaries of what might constitute ‘East Asia’ in the process, this volume makes a robust intervention into studies of East Asian cinema and women in film. h4Examines the work of women in East Asian Cinema in front of and behind the screen/h4ulliHighlights understudied areas on women’s contributions to film - East Asian film in particular/liliHighlights importance of re-historicising women’s creative labour in film, not just as actors on screen/liliRecentres women’s film history into film history more broadly/liliCreates opportunities for dialogue amongst established and emerging scholars working in different areas of East Asian film studies/li/ulpiWomen in East Asian Cinema/i brings together new and emerging work to highlight and explore the understudied contributions of women to the films and creative industries of East Asia. It is a book which foregrounds the importance of re-historicising women’s creative labour in film, not just as actors on screen, but as voices who have steered the production, circulation and consumption of these films across global contexts./ppOver three sections, the book provides perspectives on gender representation in East and South-East Asian cinema; new explorations of women’s labour contributions as directors, screenwriters, and editors; and considerations of the contemporary circulation processes through which such work reaches global audiences./ppBy recentring women’s film histories within the broader history of cinema and interrogating the geo-political boundaries of what might constitute ‘East Asia’ in the process, this volume makes a robust intervention into studies of East Asian cinema and women in film./p Cover Half-Title Title Page Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Contributors Foreword Introduction: Women in East Asian Cinema: Gender Representations, Creative Labour and Global Histories Part I: Gender Representations 1 A Cinema of Pleasure: He Xiaopei’s Home Video Aesthetics and Queer Feminist Politics 2 Work Ethic(s) of Being a Woman: Images of Female Labour in Hong Kong Cinema (1950s–60s) 3 ‘Functioning on the Fringes’: Interrogating New South Korean Womanhood and Millennial Trauma in Microhabitat (2017) 4 The Female Gaze in Xu Jinglei’s Letter from an Unknown Woman (2004) 5 Ichi (2008): Female Stars and Gender Representations in the Zatoichi Franchise 6 Agency and Subjectivity of the Female Protagonists in Qiong Yao Films Part II: Creative Labour 7 Japanese Documentary Filmmaker Haneda Sumiko: Authorship and Gender Perspective 8 A Challenge on Every Page: Female Screenwriter-Directors in the South Korean Film Industry 9 The Film Star and Her Husband: The Collaboration between Takamine Hideko and Matsuyama Zenzō 10 Angie Chen: Hong Kong Film Pioneer 11 Her Own Feminism: Authorship and Editing in Ning Ying’s Filmmaking Practice Part III: Global Histories 12 Figurations of the Nyonya: The Uses and Abuses of Peranakan Chinese Representation in Film 13 Temporally Performing a Region: A Feminist Analysis of Southeast Asian Women’s Filmmaking 14 Celebrating Women in Global Cinema: Disruptive Programming and East Asian Women on International Screens Appendix 1 Index