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This comprehensive book defines the significance of film-making and film viewing in Korea. Covering the introduction of motion pictures in 1903, Korean cinema during the Japanese colonial period (1910-45), and the development of North and South Korean cinema up to the 1990s, Lee introduces the works of Korea's major directors, and analyzes the Korean film industry in terms of production, distribution, and reception.
As the first detailed English-language book on the subject, Korean Horror Cinema introduces the cultural specificity of the genre to an international audience, from the iconic monsters of gothic horror, such as the wonhon (vengeful female ghost) and the gumiho (shapeshifting fox), to the avenging killers of Oldboy and Death Bell. Beginning in the 1960s with The Housemaid, it traces a path through the history of Korean horror, offering new interpretations of classic films, demarcating the shifting patterns of production and consumption across the decades, and introducing readers to films rarely seen and discussed outside of Korea. It explores the importance of folklore and myth on horror film...
In attempts to identify the integral elements contributory to the recent success of South Korean films in East Asia, most existing researches maintain their wide focal length on either: underlying political conditions like South Korea's media liberalization, or the continually rising demand for non-Hollywood films in the region. This text, however, takes a different approach and looks more closely to the question of "South Korean cinema's place in (re)construction of East Asian identity" as it was found a significant yet underexplored area of research. The questioning is attempted by testing the hypothesis that the merit of South Korean films relies more on the cultural "similarity / proximi...
This book provides a political and cultural exploration of the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea since its inception in 1996. By paying a particular attention to the organizers' use of an Asian regionalization strategy, SooJeong Ahn reveals how the festival staked out a unique and influential position within a rapidly changing global landscape. Very little primary empirical research has been conducted to date on non-Western film festivals, though PIFF and Tokyo and Hong Kong have swiftly grown more exciting and influential as testing grounds for global cinema innovations. The initiation, development and growth of PIFF should be understood as resulting from productive tensions ...
A war-torn country only 60 years ago, South Korea has since achieved prodigious growth and global integration, experiencing rapid industrialization and seeing its cultural exports gain international popularity. Because of this rapid transformation, an investigation of the Korean ethos--the shared self-concept woven through the divergent social contexts of both South and North Korea--is challenging. This book provides an introduction to the Korean ethos, detailing its representation in key cultural words and in film. Part I explores definitive concepts (terms) generally regarded as difficult to translate, such as han (regret), jeong (feeling) and deok (virtue), and how they are expressed in Korean cinema. Part II analyzes film narratives based on these concepts via close readings of 13 films, including three from North Korea.
In Transnational Korean Cinema author Dal Yong Jin explores the interactions of local and global politics, economics, and culture to contextualize the development of Korean cinema and its current place in an era of neoliberal globalization and convergent digital technologies. The book emphasizes the economic and industrial aspects of the story, looking at questions on the interaction of politics and economics, including censorship and public funding, and provides a better view of the big picture by laying bare the relationship between film industries, the global market, and government. Jin also sheds light on the operations and globalization strategies of Korean film industries alongside changing cultural policies in tandem with Hollywood’s continuing influences in order to comprehend the power relations within cultural politics, nationally and globally. This is the first book to offer a full overview of the nascent development of Korean cinema.
This book departs from existing studies by focusing on the impact of international influences on the society, culture, and language of both North and South Korea. Since President Kim Young Sam’s segyehwa drive of the mid-1990s, South Korea has become a model for successful globalization. In contrast, North Korea is commonly considered one of the least internationally integrated countries. This characterization fails to account for the reality of the two Koreas and their global engagements. The opening essay situates the chapters by highlighting some significant contrasts and commonalities between the experiences of North and South Korea’s history of engagement with the world beyond the Peninsula. The chapters explore both the longer-term historical influence of Korea’s international contacts as well as specific Korean cultural, linguistic, and social developments that have occurred since the 1990s demise of the global Cold War and greater international integration.
Fifty Contemporary Film Directors examines the work of some of today’s most popular and influential cinematic figures. It provides an accessible overview of each director’s contribution to cinema, incorporating a discussion of their career, major works and impact. Revised throughout and with twelve new entries, this second edition is an up-to-date introduction to some of the most prominent film makers of the present day. The directors, from differing backgrounds and working across a range of genres, include: Martin Scorsese Steven Spielberg Sofia Coppola Julie Dash Shane Meadow Michael Moore Peter Jackson Guillermo Del Toro Tim Burton Jackie Chan Ang Lee Pedro Almodóvar. With further reading and a filmography accompanying each entry, this comprehensive guide is indispensable to all those studying contemporary film and will appeal to anyone interested in the key individuals behind modern cinema’s greatest achievements.
This open access book examines the depiction of Korean history in recent South Korean historical films. Released over the Hallyu (“Korean Wave”) period starting in the mid-1990s, these films have reflected, shaped, and extended the thriving public discourse over national history. In these works, the balance between fate and freedom—the negotiation between societal constraints and individual will, as well as cyclical and linear history—functions as a central theme, subtext, or plot device for illuminating a rich variety of historical events, figures, and issues. In sum, these highly accomplished films set in Korea’s past address universal concerns about the relationship between structure and agency, whether in collective identity or in individual lives. Written in an engaging and accessible style by an established historian, Fate and Freedom in Korean Historical Films offers a distinctive perspective on understanding and appreciating Korean history and culture.
This volume explores the complex horizon of landscapes in horror film culture to better understand the use that the genre makes of settings, locations, spaces, and places, be they physical, imagined, or altogether imaginary. In The Philosophy of Horror, Noël Carroll discusses the “geography” of horror as often situating the filmic genre in liminal spaces as a means to displace the narrative away from commonly accepted social structures: this use of space is meant to trigger the audience’s innate fear of the unknown. This notion recalls Freud’s theorization of the uncanny, as it is centered on recognizable locations outside of the Lacanian symbolic order. In some instances, a locatio...