Search results

The goal of this article is to examine the current trends of political cinema in postcolonial Hong Kong. Many leaders of the Hong Kong mainstream cinema have accepted the Chinese authoritarian rule as a precondition for expanding into the ever-expanding Mainland film market, but a handful of conscientious filmmakers choose to make political cinema under the shadow of a wealthy and descendant industry, expressing their desire for democracy and justice and critiquing the unequal power relations between Hong Kong and China.

This paper consults relevant documentary materials and cinematic texts to contextualize the latest development of political cinema in Hong Kong. It presents an in-depth analysis of the works of two local independent filmmakers Herman Yau and Vincent Chui.

This study reveals a glimpse of hope in the current films of Herman Yau and Vincent Chui, which suggests that a reconfiguration of local identity and communal relationship may turn around the collective despair caused by the oppressive measures of the Chinese authoritarian state and the end of the Umbrella Movement in late 2014.

Despite the small sample size, this paper highlights the rise of cinematic localism through a closer look at the works of Hong Kong independent filmmakers.

This study reveals an ambivalent mentality in the Hong Kong film industry where critical filmmakers strive to assert their creativity and agency against the externally imposed Chinese hegemonic power.

This investigation is an original scholarly study of film and politics in postcolonial Hong Kong.

Looks at the first 100 years of Italian cinema examining its role in Italy’s recent history. Provides a bibliography of major film directors, Italian cinema sources, reference works, histories, themes, theory and criticism and articles in journals.

The chapter contends that although Israeli reality is replete with legal issues, very few films deal directly with the law or with a legal process as a central theme. Contemporary Israeli films are not very different from the early Israeli films in their embracement of a national heroic narrative, which typically leaves very little space for legal issues. The chapter demonstrates the absence of law from Israeli cinema by looking closely at war films, which are probably the most popular and influential Israeli films. War films reflect and in the same time participate in the construction of the Israeli collective consciousness, wherein the army experience is central. Tracing the way in which law is presented (or lacks representation) in them may shed light from a new angle on the role of law in shaping social and political norms in Israel.

Focusing on a community organisation, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the process through which infringing contested practices that threaten or compromise the community’s sense of distinction are transformed into acceptable symbolic markers.

An ethnographic study comprising participant observation, in-depth interviews and secondary data was conducted in the context of a non-profit community cinema.

Taking a longitudinal approach and drawing from practice theory, this paper outlines how member-driven, customer-driven and necessity-imposed infringing practices settle in new contexts. Further, this paper demonstrates that such practices are filtered in terms of their ideological “fit” with the organisation and are, as a result, rejected, recontextualised or replaced with do-it-yourself alternatives. In this process, authority shifts from the contested practice to community members and eventually to the space as a whole, ensuring the singularisation of the cinema-going experience.

This paper addresses how the integration of hegemonic practices to an off-the-mainstream experience can provide a differentiation tool, aiding resisting organisations to compensate for their lack of resources.

While the appropriation practices that communities use to ensure distinction are well documented, there is little understanding of the journey that negatively contested practices undergo in their purification to more community-friendly forms. This paper theorises this journey by outlining how the objects, meanings and doings that comprise hegemonic practices are transformed by and transforming of resisting organisations.

Wonders whether, owing to severely restricted access, China’s government policy towards digital communications will remain in a constant state of flux – or will it gain economic benefits without a social penalty? Concludes that China has to link the forces of change to channel and deflect domestic resistance.

Anglo-centric scholarship understands authenticity of online mediated performance for acquiring fame as a context-dependent claim, requiring labor in displaying a vulnerable self that is evaluated and validated by a relevant audience. This book chapter examines this concept in a non-Western context through a case study of a Pakistani microcelebrity, Qandeel Baloch. By explaining how Pakistani broadcast celebrity performances continue to be evaluated by religious and moral standards, this analysis finds how a transgressive performance shapes an authentic microcelebrity claim on social media.

If military cooks can consistently fuck-up the preparation of refried beans, why would one expect these nincompoops (I have learned to call this institutional rationality) to produce efficient killers in 4–6 months of basic training? The answer to this is obvious: they don’t. Before an individual comes into the military, they have been inculcated with celebratory military triumphalism for decades; these teachings come from parents, family members, peers, teachers, professors, history book lies, cinematic lies, mass media lies, religious lies, and a wide range of other cultural lies (see Goode, 1978). These cultural lies tell of the alleged or presumed challenges of outside forces, and of how these unprovoked aggressions are met with the heroic efforts of our own peace loving people. These cultural lies neglect to specify the complete social, economic, and political context, and the extent to which the aggressive acts were a response to other actions which preceded them. For America specifically, they neglect the Christian genocide of the indigenous peoples, and our own long-standing and consistent imperial actions from the Bay of Manila onward. The cultural lies purport to justify blood sacrifice of the young for the short-term hubris and conceits of the political, economic, and religious leaders.

The purpose of this article is to examine the challenges of collection analysis and development in response to a new academic interdisciplinary program in East Asian Studies at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

First, the authors examined the needs of a new East Asian Studies program and its interdisciplinary nature. Next, an automated collection development tool was chosen that provides a snapshot of current monograph holdings and a comparison with other equivalent institutions. Lastly, the authors conduct an analysis of citations in key Asian Studies journals, library holdings in relevant top electronic resources and core journal subscriptions. For future collection building, vendor tools and patron-drive acquisitions are explored.

Traditional methods of collection development can prove inadequate. A variety of tools and methods need to be used to guarantee adequate results.

This paper builds on prior research related to developing interdisciplinary collections by using traditional methods of collection development with critical judgments.