Cosmopolitan Cinema

Felicia Chan is Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester, where she was previously Research Councils UK Fellow in Film, Media and Transnational Cultures. She has contributed to the journals Television, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, among others, and is co-editor of the collection Genre in Asian Film and Television: New Approaches (2011).

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Manchester.Films are produced, reviewed and watched worldwide, often circulating between cultural contexts. The book explores cosmopolitanism and its debates through the lens of East Asian cinemas from Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and Singapore, throwing doubt on the validity of national cinemas or definitive cultural boundaries. Case studies illuminate the ambiguously gendered star persona of Taiwanese-Hong Kong actress Brigitte Lin, the fictional realism of director Jia Zhangke, the arcane process of selection for the Best Foreign Film Oscar and the intimate connection between cinema and identity in Hirokazu Koreeda s Afterlife (1998). Considering films, their audiences and tastemaking institutions, the book argues that cosmopolitan cinema does not smooth over difference, but rather puts it on display."

Cinema is a fertile ground for the production of cosmopolitan ideals.

IntroductionI. Forms and Identities2.Wuxia cross-dressing and transgender identity: The roles of Brigitte Lin Ching- hsia from Swordsman II to Ashes of Time3.Performing history in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution4.Backstage/onstage cosmopolitanism: Jia Zhangke's The World, Still Life and 24 CityII. Institutions and Economies5.The International Film Festival and the Making of a National Cinemas: The case of Rotterdam and a Malaysian-Chinese film6.When a foreign-language film has 'too much English' in it: The case of a Singapore film and the OscarsIII. Assemblages and Embodiments7.Trompe l'oeil animation in Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Paprika8.Remembering to forget: Cinematic memory as self-redemption in Hirokazu Koreeda's Afterlife