Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema.

Edited by Wimal Dissanayake, a senior fellow at the East-West Center, in Honolulu, HI, Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema circumvents concepts of "history" and "nationhood" in an effort to examine the intersection of colonialism and nationalism in the discourse of Asian cinema. Dissanayake's aim in compiling these essays is to probe the emergence of nationalism, subnationalism, ethnic identity, and religious loyalties as they have become articulated through cinematic traditions. The anthology includes 12 essays that revolve around cinematic practices from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and explore the concept of national cinema as being critical to the formation of Asian popular culture. As Dissanayake states in the introduction, "this concept privileges ideas of coherence and unity and stable cultural meanings associated with the uniqueness of a given nation." The anthology is based on the premise that national Asian cinema is imbricated with ideological projection and cultural myth-production, processes that often erode ulterior histories and serve to legitimize or unify a specific sense of nationhood for both foreign audiences and Asian populations as well.

Dissanayake uses the topos of nationhood and its function in social space to provoke discussion surrounding the complex relationship between the economic demands of film production and the demands of the nation-state. He articulates in the introduction that, "cinema in most countries is closely tied to the nation-state due to considerations of economics - production, distribution, and exhibition - and content control." Most Asian cinema relies solely on local audience support and revenue for returns on financial investments. With a smaller private sector resource pool, government assistance and coordination becomes imperative for Asian filmmakers to produce their work. This situation serves as a background to Isolde Standish's essay, "Korean Cinema and the New Realism: Text and Context," which aims to situate the films of the South Korean "New Wave," produced as a result of the 1988 relaxation of national political censorship laws, within their social and political contexts.

This anthology provides an interesting discussion by offering a theoretical framework from which to examine the complex topics of nation, state, identity formation, and collective history in the realm of cinema. It becomes an even more effective tool by playing itself out within a diverse Asian context. This is useful not merely for comparison against Western tropes, but also for making and sustaining a healthy intra-Asian contrast.

Gloria Sutton