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Worldly desires
cosmopolitanism and cinema in Hong Kong and Taiwan
by Brian Hu
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Book Presentation:
Examines the role that cinema played in imagining Hong Kong and Taiwan’s place in the world
How does cinema imagine our place in the world? This book looks at the studios, films and policies that charted the transnational vision of Hong Kong and Taiwan, two places with an uneasy relationship to the idea of nationhood.
Examining the cultural, political and industrial overlaps between these cinemas – as well as the areas where they uniquely parallel each other – author Brian Hu brings together perspectives from cinema studies, Chinese studies and Asian American studies to show how culture is produced in the spaces between empires. With case studies of popular stars like Linda Lin Dai and Edison Chen, and spectacular genres like the Shaolin Temple cycle of martial arts films and the romantic melodramas of 1970s Taiwan, this book explores what it meant to be both cosmopolitan and Chinese in the second half of the twentieth century.
Key Features
• Studies Hong Kong and Taiwan cinemas together, and separately from the cinema of mainland China
• Brings together perspectives from Chinese studies and Asian American studies to show how culture is produced between empires, in ethnic and racialized ways internationally
• Provides a serious take on “trashy” work that has been neglected by scholarship, including: romantic melodramas; martial arts films with seemingly recycled plots and tropes; action films; and music videos
About the Author:
Brian Hu is Assistant Professor in Television, Film, and New Media at San Diego State University. He is also the Artistic Director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival.
Press Reviews:
Both theoretically rigorous and fun to read, Worldly Desires is a fully cinematic exploration of how the Sinophone cinemas of Taiwan and Hong Kong have imagined exhilarating aspirations to transition from local to world citizenship, as well as more fraught yearnings for global recognition.– Professor Chris Berry, King's College London
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> On a related topic:
Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China (2018)
Kaleidoscopic Histories
Dir. Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh
Main Melody Films (2022)
Hong Kong Directors in Mainland China
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