Worlding Asian Cinemas: Aesthetics and Globalization

In this course, students will be introduced to some important concepts, such as nationalism, regionalism, auteurship, and national/transnational film markets, that contribute to the formation of what Asian cinemas are or might look like. In the first half of the course, we will watch some exemplary “Asian” films that are “internationally” acclaimed and acknowledged as representing Asian cinemas. This means that we will observe the worlding process of national or regional cinemas by looking closely at some aesthetic criterions and discourses in which these films both partake and are exploited economically and culturally. In the second half of the course, we will shift our attention towards  some locally popular Asian films, which stay quite unknown on the international stage, in order to question the established boundary between Asia and the world, and to investigate what aesthetic criterions work in marking or conditioning such boundary, and whether or not this boundary stays stable. During the course of these ten weeks, students will gain a brief overview of debates in film theory, national/transnational cinemas, and globalization. Students will also learn about linguistic and cultural differences, translational aspects of these aesthetic works, and how to write a short film analysis based on all these dimensions.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: International Cultures (IC)