This book studies the Indonesian martial art Pencak Silat and related media practices, and, building on that, assesses mediatization processes, meaning the potential influence of technology-based media practices. Pencak Silat represents a cultural system of values and beliefs, with hierarchical structures and relations, and social advancement being mediated in embodied social learning. The study contributes to martial arts studies and media studies, demonstrating potentials and limitations of media technologies and their (dis-)embodiment – their extension or reduction of the body as medium, and their embeddedness in or detachment from a given socio-cultural context. With Pencak Silat being practiced all over Indonesia, by a large part of the population, the thesis also represents a contribution to Indonesian studies. Based on extensive fieldwork (between 2008 and 2016), the study analyzes martial arts and/as media in Indonesia, and presents an ethnography of Pencak Silat and mediatization.

Now in paperback, this volume examines this phenomenon, looking at examples from film, documentary, television, animation and games. In recent years, many media producers, screenwriters, technicians and investors from the Asia-Pacific region have been attracted to projects in the People's Republic of China. The Chinese state’s willingness to consider collaboration with foreign partners is a major factor that is enticing and supporting a range of new ventures. Projects, often with a lighter commercial entertainment feel, compared with the propaganda-oriented content of the past, are multiplying. With this surge in production and the availability of resources and locations, creative talent is moving to the Mainland from South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.

Ghost Movies in Southeast Asia and Beyond explores ghost movies, one of the most popular film genres in East and Southeast Asia, by focusing on movie narratives, the cultural contexts of their origins and audience reception. In the middle of the Asian crisis of the late 1990s, ghost movies became major box office hits. The emergence of the phenomenally popular “J-Horror” genre inspired similar ghost movie productions in Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore. Ghost movies are embedded and reflected in national as well as transnational cultures and politics, in narrative traditions, in the social worlds of the audience, and in the perceptual experience of each individual. They reflect upon the identity crises and traumas of the living as well as of the dead, and they unfold affection and attraction in the border zone between amusement and thrill, secular and religious worldviews. This makes the genre interesting not only for sociologists, anthropologists, media and film scholars, but also for scholars of religion.

This edited volume examines the many facets of contemporary Malaysia-India bilateral relations. The contributors provide analysis from the perspectives of trade and economic relations, people-to-people connections, tourism, security cooperation, ethnic identities, comparative religiosity, and revisiting the historical links between these countries.

This book explores ways in which diverse regional cultures in Indonesia and their histories have been expressed in film since the early 1950s. It also explores underlying cultural dominants within the new nation, established at the end of 1949 with the achievement of independence from Dutch colonialism. It sees these dominants—for example forms of group body language and forms of consultation—not simply as a product of the nation, but as related to unique and long standing formations and traditions in the numerous societies in the Indonesian archipelago, on which the nation is based. Nevertheless, the book is not concerned only with past traditions, but explores ways in which Indonesian filmmakers have addressed, critically, distinctive aspects of their traditional societies in their feature films (including at times the social position of women), linking past to the present, where relevant, in dynamic ways.

Featuring nearly three thousand film stills, production shots, and other illustrations, an authoritative history of the cinema traces the development of the medium, its filmmakers and stars, and the evolution of national cinemas around the world.

"The Invention of Martial Arts examines the media history of what we now call 'martial arts' and argues that martial arts is a cultural construction that was born in film, TV and other media. It argues that 'martial arts' exploded into popular consciousness entirely thanks to the work of media. Of course, the book does not deny the existence of real, material histories and non-media dimensions in martial arts practices. But it thoroughly recasts the status of such histories, combining recent myth-busting findings in historical martial arts research with important insights into the discontinuous character of history, the widespread 'invention of tradition', the orientalism and imagined geographies that animate many ideas about history, and the frequent manipulation of history for reasons of status, cultural capital, private or public power, politics, and/or financial gain. In doing so, The Invention of Martial Arts argues for the primacy of media representation as key player in the emergence and spread of martial arts. This argument overturns the dominant belief that 'real practices' are primary, while representations are secondary. The book makes its case via historical analysis of the British media history of such Eastern and Western martial arts as Bartitsu, jujutsu, judo, karate, tai chi and MMA across a range of media, from newspapers, comics and books to cartoon, film and TV series, as well as television adverts and music videos, focusing on key but often overlooked texts such as adverts for 'Hai Karate', the 1970s disco hit 'Kung Fu Fighting', and many other mainstream and marginal media texts"--

The Global Film Book is an accessible and entertaining exploration of the development of film as global industry and art form, written especially for students and introducing readers to the rich and varied cinematic landscape beyond Hollywood. Highlighting areas of difference and similarity in film economies and audiences, as well as form, genre and narrative, this textbook considers a broad range of examples and up to date industry data from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and Latin America. Author Roy Stafford combines detailed studies of indigenous film and television cultures with cross border, global and online entertainment operations, including examples from Nollywood to Korean Cinema, via telenovelas and Nordic crime drama. The Global Film Book demonstrates a number of contrasting models of contemporary production, distribution and consumption of film worldwide, charting and analysing the past, present and potential futures for film throughout the world. The book also provides students with: a series of exploratory pathways into film culture worldwide illuminating analyses and suggestions for further readings and viewing, alongside explanatory margin notes and case studies a user friendly text design, featuring over 120 colour images a dynamic and comprehensive blog, online at www.globalfilmstudies.com, providing updates and extensions of case studies in the book and analysis of the latest developments in global film issues.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork spanning twenty years, Power Plays is the first scholarly book in English on wayang golek, the Sundanese rod-puppet theater of West Java. It is a detailed and lively account of the ways in which performers of this major Asian theatrical form have engaged with political discourses in Indonesia. Wayang golek has shaped, as well, the technological and commercial conditions of art and performance in a modernizing society. Using interviews with performers, musical transcriptions, translations of narrative and song texts, and archival materials, author Andrew N. Weintraub analyzes the shifting and flexible nature of a set of performance practices called Padalangan, the art of the puppeteer. He focuses on "superstar" performers and the musical troupes that dominated wayang golek during the New Order political regime of former president Suharto (1966-98) and the ensuing three years of the post-Suharto period. Studies of actual performances illuminate stylistic and formal elements and situate wayang golek as a social process in Sundanese culture and society. Power Plays includes an interactive multimedia CD-ROM of wayang golek. Power Plays shows how meanings about identity, citizenship, and community are produced through theater, music, language, and discourse. While based in ethnographic theory and methods, this book is at the center of a new synthesis emerging among ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Its cross-disciplinary approach will inspire researchers studying similar struggles over cultural authority and popular representation in culture and the performing arts.

Indonesia has a long and rich tradition of homosexual and transgender cultures, and the past 40 years in particular has seen an increased visibility of sexual minorities in the country, which has been reflected through film and popular culture. This book examines how representations of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals and communities have developed in Indonesian cinema during this period. The book first explores Indonesian engagement with waria (male-to-female transgender) identities and the emerging representation of gay and lesbi Indonesians during Suharto’s New Order regime (1966-98), before going on to the reimagining of these positions following the fall of the New Order, a period which saw the rebirth of the film industry with a new generation of directors, producers and actors. Using original interview research and focus groups with gay, lesbi and waria identified Indonesians, alongside the films themselves and a wealth of archival sources, the book contrasts the ways in which transgendered lives are actually lived with their representations on screen.