A wide-ranging analysis of modern South Korean cinema.

In Transnational Korean Cinema author Dal Yong Jin explores the interactions of local and global politics, economics, and culture to contextualize the development of Korean cinema and its current place in an era of neoliberal globalization and convergent digital technologies. The book emphasizes the economic and industrial aspects of the story, looking at questions on the interaction of politics and economics, including censorship and public funding, and provides a better view of the big picture by laying bare the relationship between film industries, the global market, and government. Jin also sheds light on the operations and globalization strategies of Korean film industries alongside changing cultural policies in tandem with Hollywood’s continuing influences in order to comprehend the power relations within cultural politics, nationally and globally. This is the first book to offer a full overview of the nascent development of Korean cinema.

The rapid development of Korean cinema during the decades of the 1960s and 2000s reveals a dynamic cinematic history which runs parallel to the nation’s political, social, economic and cultural transformation during these formative periods. This book examines the ways in which South Korean cinema has undergone a transformation from an antiquated local industry in the 1960s into a thriving international cinema in the 21st century. It investigates the circumstances that allowed these two eras to emerge as creative watersheds, and demonstrates the forces behind Korea’s positioning of itself as an important contributor to regional and global culture, and especially its interplay with Japan, Greater China, and the United States. Beginning with an explanation of the understudied operations of the film industry during its 1960s take-off, it then offers insight into the challenges that producers, directors, and policy makers faced in the 1970s and 1980s during the most volatile part of Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian rule and the subsequent Chun Doo-hwan military government. It moves on to explore the film industry’s professionalization in the 1990s and subsequent international expansion in the 2000s. In doing so, it explores the nexus and tensions between film policy, producing, directing, genre, and the internationalization of Korean cinema over half a century. By highlighting the recent transnational turn in national cinemas, this book underscores the impact of developments pioneered by Korean cinema on the transformation of ‘Planet Hallyuwood’. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies and Film Studies.

DIVArgues that although the last two decades of Korean history were a period of progress in political democratization, the country refused to part from a "masculine point of view" which is also mirrored in Korean cinema./div

South Korean cinema is a striking example of non-Western contemporary cinematic success. Thanks to the increasing numbers of moviegoers and domestic films produced, South Korea has become one of the world’s major film markets. In 2001, the South Korean film industry became the first in recent history to reclaim its domestic market from Hollywood and continues to maintain around a 50 percent market share today. High-quality South Korean films are increasingly entering global film markets and connecting with international audiences in commercial cinemas and art theatres, and at major international film festivals. Despite this growing recognition of the films themselves, Korean cinema’s rich heritage has not heretofore received significant scholarly attention in English-language publications. This groundbreaking collection of thirty-five essays by a wide range of academic specialists situates current scholarship on Korean cinema within the ongoing theoretical debates in contemporary global film studies. Chapters explore key films of Korean cinema, from Sweet Dream, Madame Freedom, The Housemaid, and The March of Fools to Oldboy, The Host, and Train to Busan, as well as major directors such as Shin Sang-ok, Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, Bong Joon-ho, Hong Sang-soo, Park Chan-wook, and Lee Chang-dong. While the chapters provide in-depth analyses of particular films, together they cohere into a detailed and multidimensional presentation of Korean cinema’s cumulative history and broader significance. With its historical and critical scope, abundance of new research, and detailed discussion of important individual films, Rediscovering Korean Cinema is at once an accessible classroom text and a deeply informative compendium for scholars of Korean and East Asian studies, cinema and media studies, and communications. It will also be an essential resource for film industry professionals and anyone interested in international cinema.

This book provides a political and cultural exploration of the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea since its inception in 1996. By paying a particular attention to the organizers' use of an Asian regionalization strategy, SooJeong Ahn reveals how the festival staked out a unique and influential position within a rapidly changing global landscape. Very little primary empirical research has been conducted to date on non-Western film festivals, though PIFF and Tokyo and Hong Kong have swiftly grown more exciting and influential as testing grounds for global cinema innovations. The initiation, development and growth of PIFF should be understood as resulting from productive tensions in the festival's efforts to serve local, regional and national constituencies. The book also reflects the complexities of rapid transformation in the South Korean film industry as it has reached out to the global market since the late 1990s. SooJeong Ahn worked for the Pusan International Film Festival between 1998 and 2002 and has completed a Ph.D. on film festivals at the University of Nottingham. Her recent publications include "Re-imagining the Past: Programming South Korean Retrospectives at PIFF," in Film International (Vol. 6, 2008), "Placing South Korean Cinema into Pusan International Film Festival: Programming Strategy in the Global/Local Context," in What a Difference a Region Makes: Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in North-East Asia (2009); "Re-mapping Asian Cinema: The Tenth Anniversary of PIFF in 2005" in Cinemas, Identities and Beyond (2010).

Arthouse Crime Scenes is the first book to address the relationship between art cinema and crime, contributing to the study of both categories. Case studies are provided of works by celebrated filmmakers including Lucretia Martell, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Bong Joon Ho, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hirokazu Koreeda, Jia Zhangke, Andrey Zvyagintsez and Lee Chang-dong. How is crime represented in art cinema? And how can this be understood in the context of global sociopolitical and film-industrial trends? Arthouse crime scenes draw on variable combinations of elements associated with art cinema and crime genres. Crime might be shown or lurk only at the edges. It might be left unresolved or unexplained. Crime can be petty and small scale or raise big questions associated with the arthouse sector: political issues, the nature of humanity, truth and knowability. In this book, close textual analysis is combined with focus on social and industrial contexts. A recurring theme is the situation of arthouse crime films within differing manifestations of broader processes of late-modern neoliberal globalization and cultural hybridity. Approaches examined range from the oblique to social realism and other mixtures of crime and arthouse tendencies.

The Cinema of Japan and Korea is the fourth volume in the new 24 Frames series of studies of national and regional cinema, and focuses on the continuing vibrancy of Japanese and Korean film. The 24 concise and informative essays each approach an individual film or documentary, together offering a unique introduction to the cinematic output of the two countries. With a range that spans from silent cinema to the present day, from films that have achieved classic status to underground masterpieces, the book provides an insight into the breadth of the Japanese and Korean cinematic landscapes. Among the directors covered are Akira Kurosawa, Takeshi Kitano, Kim Ki-duk, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kinji Fukusaku, Kim Ki-young, Nagisa Oshima and Takashi Miike. Included are in-depth studies of films such as Battle Royale, Killer Butterfly, Audition, Violent Cop, In the Realm of the Senses, Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer, Teenage Hooker Becomes a Killing Machine, Stray Dog, A Page of Madness and Godzilla.

This book examines the various film festivals where Korean cinema plays a significant role, both inside and outside of Korea, focusing on their history, structure and function, and analysis of successful festival films. Using Korean film festivals and Korean cinema at international film festivals as its primary lens, this interdisciplinary volume explores the shifting relationships between the multi-media genre of film and the fast-growing changing world of film festival cultures. It examines the changing aesthetics of Korean film in a transcultural context and historical (dis)continuity from a variety of angles from film and media studies, literary and cultural studies, Korean studies, Japanese studies, and also from film festival practice. Moreover, through comprehensive examinations of both domestic and international film festivals from the perspectives of production, distribution and marketing it highlights the reception of Korean cinema outside of Korea in an increasingly globalised industry. Featuring the contributions of expert scholars of international film and Korean cinema, in addition to interview material with a practicing film professional, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Korean and Asian film and media studies, as well as those interested in the impact of film festivals more generally.

A multifaceted exploration of the South Korean film industry