Eclipsed Cinema: The Film Culture of Colonial Korea

From the publisher’s website:

A ground-breaking investigation into the film culture of colonial Korea

In this pioneering investigation into the seldom-studied film culture of colonial Korea (1910-1945), Dong Hoon Kim brings new perspectives to the associations between colonialism, modernity, film historiography and national cinema. By reconstructing the lost intricacies of colonial film history, Eclipsed Cinema explores under-investigated aspects of colonial film culture, such as the representational politics of colonial cinema, the film unit of the colonial government, the social reception of Hollywood cinema, and Japanese settlers’ film culture. Filling a significant void in Asian film history, Eclipsed Cinema greatly expands the critical and historical scopes of early cinema and Korean and Japanese film histories, as well as modern Asian culture, and colonial and postcolonial studies.

Dong Hoon Kim is Assistant Professor in East Asian Languages and Literatures and a member of the committee on Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon.

Key features

• Examines colonial Korean cinema at the critical junctures of Korean, Japanese and colonial cinemas
• Introduces a conceptual re-figuration of colonial cinema and a new historiographical method
• Explores historical figures, issues and stories of colonial Korean cinema that have not yet been discussed

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION: Introducing Joseon Cinema: The Question of Film History and the Film Culture of Colonial Korea

CHAPTER 1: The Beginning: Toward A Mass Entertainment

• Film Culture Begins: The Development of Early Film Culture
• Film Production Begins: Moving Picture Unit of the Office of the Governor-General

CHAPTER 2: Joseon Cinema, Cinematic Joseon: On some Critical Questions of Joseon Cinema

• Desperately Seeking the Joseon Image: Arirang (1926) and the Making of Joseon Film Aesthetics
• Joseon Film Lyricism: Joseon Colour and Joseon Films ‘Exported’ to Japan

CHAPTER 3: Migrating with the Movies: Japanese Settler Film Culture

• The Formation and Characteristics of Settler Film Culture
• ‘A Film Practice Distinctly Joseon’: The Ethnic Segregation of Movie Theatres

CHAPTER 4: Colonial Film Spectatorship: Nationalist Enough?

• Korean Spectators or How They Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hollywood
• Performing Colonial Identity: The Transcolonial Practice of Byeonsa/Benshi

CHAPTER 5: Film Spectatorship and the Tensions of Modernity

• Modern Girls and Boys Go to the Movies: Cinema, Modernity, and the Colonised Nation
• Mobility, Movie Theatres, and Female Film Spectatorship

CONCLUSION: Integrating into the Imperial Cinema

Appendix
Bibliography