Malayanized Chinese-language cinema: on Yi Shui’s Lion City,Black Gold,and film writings

This article discusses how the Singaporean Chinese director, Yi Shui, created a Malayanized Chinese-language cinema during the 1950s and 1960s, and offers a retrospective of the way people in Malaya and Singapore framed their nation-building discourse in terms of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism after the Bandung Conference in 1955. This article holds that the term huayu dianying (Chinese-language cinema) was not first used in the 1990s by scholars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but that its origins can be traced to Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s where Yi Shui promoted Malayanized Chinese-language cinema in the Nanyang Siang Pau. This earlier use of the term “Chinese-language cinema” overlaps with its current academic usage, including films in Mandarin and Chinese dialects. In 1959, Yi Shui’s essays were collected in On Issues of the Malayanization of Chinese-Language Cinema. Yi Shui also directed several Malayanized Chinese-language films. This article analyzes his “Chinese language cinema” film practice by examining the discourses surrounding the “Malayanization of Chinese-language cinema” in order to show that his semi-documentary Lion City and the melodrama Black Gold attempted to mediate the misunderstandings rooted in the national boundaries and politics of various dialect groups through a “multi-lingual symbiosis” of Chinese languages.     

Renationalisation and resistance of Hong Kong cinema: Milkyway Image’s journey to Mainland China

Hong Kong cinema is an emerging component of the booming Chinese film industry twenty years after the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to China. Hong Kong filmmakers and film companies now routinely collaborate with the mainland industry to produce for the mainland audience, prompting many creative artists and companies of the Hong Kong industry to relocate to the mainland. Based on the fundamental idea that both mainland Chinese cinema and Hong Kong cinema are constantly reshaping as a result of inter- and trans-cultural exchanges, this article adopts a bottom-up approach to re-examine the top-down-managed cultural nationalisation of Hong Kong cinema. Hong Kong (co-)produced films are increasingly devoid of local sensibilities and identities. Film companies and talents of the Hong Kong film industry, at least in the mainstream sector, are gradually incorporated into the film industry in the mainland. Notwithstanding these overwhelming tendencies, I suggest that Hong Kong cinema’s legacies exist beyond narrative strategies and genre approaches, and have started to show in film companies’ role in, and their capability of, challenging and reshaping the future of the Chinese screenscape. Specifically, through the examination of a series of film projects from Milkyway Image, a Hong Kong-based film production company, this article shows that Hong Kong cinema’s renationalisation is a process of simultaneous cooperation, negotiation, and resistance.     

The Left and Indonesia’s 1960s: the politics of remembering and forgetting

Abstract

This article examines a pivotal decade in the recent history of Indonesian society: the 1960s. It examines the context within which the Left came to be decisively, and violently, defeated as a social and political force. It then studies the consequences of this defeat for Indonesia’s subsequent historical trajectory. The article also suggests that history‐writing anywhere is nothing less than the politics of remembering (and forgetting). What is at stake in these exercises is ultimately tied up with the legitimacy of entire social orders and systems of power. Thus, in Indonesia, the trauma of 1965 and its aftermath banished, from the collective memory of Indonesians, the political role of the Left – except in the form that runs through New Order‐era discourse on Indonesian communism. For Indonesians born or raised after 1965, the ‘communist treason’ became, arguably, the most critical element of the grand narrative of post‐colonial Indonesian history, which was so important in legitimising New Order authoritarianism. The current inability of Indonesian society and its elites to acknowledge and confront the reality of the horrors of the 1960s might prove to be a major impediment to a more genuine and substantive democratisation process.     

‘We want everybody’s salvage!’: Recycling,Voluntarism, and the People’s War

ABSTRACT

This article reveals the role of volunteers in the British government’s campaign to increase recycling during the Second World War. It uses their experience to deconstuct the idea of a 'people's war', showing how this concept was invoked in several different ways. The article demonstrates that voluntary recycling schemes were led from the bottom-up, shifted the balance of power between private citizens and local authorities, and highlighted difference based on age, socio-economic status, gender, and geographical location. It concludes that official appeals may have invoked the ‘people’s war’, but the way that these messages were received was of most importance.     

‘A Million Little Bonds’: Infidelity,Divorce and the Emotional Worlds of Marriage in British Women’s Magazines of the 1930s

This article examines infidelity discourse within women's magazines of the 1930s. Marking a departure from existing studies that have explored representations of ideal marriage, it uses discussions of marital breakdown as a lens through which to consider conceptualisations of love within marriage. It demonstrates how, in the interwar period, notions of mutual emotional investment were used to reinforce marriages that were deemed to be in breakdown. Muddying the perceived binary between individuals and the institution of marriage, this research highlights how the latter could be bolstered, rather than challenged, by recourse to the emotional worlds of spouses.     

Of Fighters and Frames: Femen’s Corporeality Between the Old,the New,the Yellow and the Blue

In this essay, we examine corporeality, its discursive framings and the salience of cultural contexts in the interpretation of embodied protest rhetoric on an example of originally Ukrainian and by now international feminist group Femen. We analyse the embodied rhetoric of Femen’s activism from various angles, with a special focus on the pivotal role of cultural locations in the interpretation of Femen’s embodied activism, in particular, and corporeal resistance, in general. With our findings, we hope to extend the existent knowledge on corporeal framing and politicalization of the body as a culture-specific site of resistance and social change.     

Return of the Kyai: representations of horror,commerce, and censorship in post‐Suharto Indonesian film and television 1

Abstract

In about half a decade since May 1998, changes have taken place in the content, production, distribution, exhibition, and discourse of Indonesian cinema. During Reformasi (1999–2001), the rules and regulations of cinema authorized under the New Order government of President Suharto began to be contested and re‐negotiated. The rise of new film genres and changes in concepts about existing genres and formats took place, new discourses emerged, and different communities and institutions arose that identified themselves with certain film genres or which used the medium of film for particular means, such as a medium for advocacy of human rights issues. Five to six years after 1998, it is apparent that besides changes, there are also many continuities: many old film institutions and structures for film production, distribution, and exhibition are still in place, and topics of discourses often recall past discourses of the New Order period or those held in the newly independent 1950s. This paper considers some of the changes in the understanding of genres and formulas within horror films, and discusses modes of representation and constraints in choices of subject matter in narrative practices in contemporary Indonesian cinema.     

The nexus of war,resettlement, and education: War-affected youth’s perspectives and responses to the Quebec education system

This article examines the realities of war-affected youth living in Quebec, Canada, and in particular, their experiences and responses to education upon resettlement. In our qualitative study, using both in-depth interviews and focus groups, we queried 22 young people affected by war. Our thematic analysis describes the challenges youth faced in school after having experienced war-related trauma and migration. Despite existing international and national education frameworks, education policies and provisions are largely lacking and ill-equipped to support refugees’ unique needs. Youth felt that teachers and support staff tended to overlook young people’s pre-migratory lives, as well as post-migratory realities. To facilitate resettlement, war-affected refugee youth sought connections beyond school – in the form of peers, surrogate families, or community members from the same country of origin. These non-formal educational supports demonstrate youth’s agency, illustrating high bonding social capital. To support youth at the nexus of war, resettlement, and education, our findings point to the need for greater consideration of both pre-and post-migratory experiences, as well as for increased bridging and social capital to strengthen the linkages across student-school-community in ways that both build upon and respond to the strengths and challenges of war-affected children.     

‘Second death’, or revival of the ‘third world’ in the context of neo‐liberal globalization

Abstract

This paper tries to analyze the historical change in the Third World in its emergent stage, in the authoritarian stage and in the current democratic stage and, thereafter, find a way to revive the Bandung spirit in the current globalization context. I define the Bandung spirit as one of a ‘non‐aligned self‐helped “organization against” the dominant powerful countries’; that is, spirit of ‘anti‐predominance’. This spirit has emerged on the base of such domestic orientation and realities as economic self‐reliance, nationally integrated political regime, convergence of the state and civil society around anti‐colonialism. However, according to intensification of the Cold War confrontation on the international level and its centrifugal influence, the early Third World changed to a ‘new’ authoritarian Third World. The Third World in this stage could be characterized by an exclusive authoritarian political regime, dependent‐developmentalist economic orientation and coercively repressed and mobilized, in the top‐down way, civil society. This authoritarian Third World began to be confronted with a strong struggle from the bottom for democratization. In order for democratization of the Third World to become its true revival in the context of globalization, the following tasks should be considered. First, the democratic Third World should be a great driving force for the institutionalization of the transnational public regulatory mechanism. Second, the democratic Third World countries try to go over a kind of ‘transformed’ dependent development strategy. Third, democratization should go along with recovery of political inclusiveness and openness of the state to civil society’s demands. Thereafter, I tried to construct globalist re‐interpretation of the Bandung, by way of conceptualizing the current globalization as imperial globalization, unlike the imperialist globalization which the historical Bandung wanted to confront. I argue that the Bandung spirit of collective self‐help organizations against the newly emerging dominant order should be revived in this worse imperial globalization context. In addition, I argue that a nationalist resistance is also one component of the multiple resistances in the current imperial globalization.     

Political aesthetics: activism,everyday life,and art’s object in 1960s’ Japan

Abstract

Around 1960, revolutionary forms of activism and critique emerged to challenge administrative forms of politics and daily life. In Japan, despite massive strikes and widespread protest, the ruling party used a Diet majority and riot police to renew the USA–Japan Security Treaty. After this display of force, this party’s new administration sought a new legitimacy, and a means to assuage and co‐opt the defeated opposition, through promoting a depoliticized everyday world of high growth and consumption, and a dehistoricized national image in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Among those activists who emerged to contest this new cultural politics, a diverse group of young artists worked to repoliticize daily life through an interventionist art practice. Their practices arose out of a particular local, playful art practice, whose focus on the material debris and spaces of the economic expansion led to an engagement with the transformations of daily life. Focusing on the art practices connected with the yearly exhibition, the Yomiuri Indépendant, I examine the advent of a critical art examining the everyday world of Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s, reflecting on its complex relation with an internationalized art world and domestic art scene, mass culture, and domestic protest movements. Examining the history of this art illuminates the state’s investments in a normative cultural order, and a particular configuration of the politics of culture in the early 1960s.     

The left‐wing movement in Malaya,Singapore and Borneo in the 1960s: ‘an era of hope or devil’s decade’?

Abstract

The 1960s was a period of Leftwing resurgence in the world. As Britain was disengaging from its empire, the ethnically plural societies she had generated within her protectorates and colonies in Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei threw up anti‐colonial movements that began struggling towards self‐determination and national independence. These movements manifested the ideologies of communism, socialism, nationalism and communalism. As British imperialism began planning its retreat, the competition for power among the local movements became intense. In Malaya, the largest of the five colonial territories, the communist party launched an armed rebellion in 1948 in the name of national liberation and independence, but made little headway. As Singapore and Malaya were closely linked and ruled, Britain introduced emergency rule in both territories. Most leftwing parties disappeared. Nationalist and communalist parties in Malaya emerged and eventually succeeded in securing national independence from Britain in 1957. Singapore was given a measure of limited self‐government in 1955, while Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei were gradually awakened towards self‐government. Leftwing parties re‐surfaced in Malaya, and in Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei in the 1950s and 1960s, and made some headway in parliamentary elections. This paper presents a historical account of their resurgence, which was however short‐lived.     

Cold War and the contested identity formation of Korean filmmakers: on Boxes of Death and Kim Ki-yo˘ng's USIS films

The definition of the Korean national cinema in the course of modern and contemporary history of South Korea has provoked controversy. This article examines the negotiations in the identity formation of Korean filmmakers examining specific objects from years of reconstruction following the Korean War. It pays attention to the time when state-building and nation-building became combined enduring heterogeneity of this process. Kim Ki-yo?ng's films depict such characters. His public information short films reflect the legacy of American war films. However, they also contain self-conscious moments when the director refuses to be identified as a mere successor of American documentary filmmakers. Kim's first commercial film, Boxes of Death (1955), an anti-communist thriller, shows great influence from Hollywood, but also with a strong auteurist impulse, theatrical tradition, and the Japanese colonial legacy. However, the most important aspect is the standing presence of America and the USIS-Korea in the identity of Kim Ki-yo?ng and his film. American agencies intervened in the work of Korean filmmakers in the interest of “Free World” bloc-building, and those filmmakers used such agencies to obtain resources. The heterogeneity in the process of the subject formation in Korean national cinema was one common characteristic of many filmmakers of the post-Korean War era.