Kristof Van den Troost. Edinburgh University Press. Hong Kong Crime Films is the first book detailing the post-war history of the genre before the release of John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986), the film that put Hong Kong action-crime on the global map.… Read More »Hong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947-1986
Jason McGrath. University of Minnesota Press. The history of Chinese cinema is as long and complicated as the tumultuous history of China itself. Each Chinese cinematic era, whether the silent, the Communist, or the contemporary, has necessitated its own form… Read More »Chinese Film: Realism and Convention from the Silent Era to the Digital Age
Hieyoon Kim. University of California Press. Celluloid Democracy tells the story of the Korean filmmakers, distributors, and exhibitors who reshaped cinema in radically empowering ways through the decades of authoritarian rule that followed Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation. Employing tactics that… Read More »Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea
Masha Salazkina. University of California Press. In this capacious transnational film history, renowned scholar Masha Salazkina proposes a groundbreaking new framework for understanding the cinematic cultures of twentieth-century socialism. Taking as a point of departure the vast body of work… Read More »World Socialist Cinema