Book launch: THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO ASIAN CINEMAS

WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE A BOOK LAUNCH FOR

THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO ASIAN CINEMAS

EDITED BY ZHEN ZHANG, SANGJOON LEE, DEBASHREE MUKHERJEE, & INTAN PARAMADITHA
PRESENTED BY THE ASIAN FILM & MEDIA INITIATIVE (AFMI), NYU

JOIN US ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024
5:15pm-6:30pm
Performance Studies Studio, 6th Floor, Tisch School of the Arts (721 Broadway)

Followed by reception.

Asian cinema studies has rapidly expanded under the impact of globalization, compounded by the resurgence of varied nationalisms, resistance movements, and the affordances of digital media. Differentiated experiences of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have further heightened interest in local politics and cultural activism, newer media and the digital everyday, and a renewed geopolitical divide between East and West and between North and South. A new “companion” to Asian cinemas therefore feels necessary and urgent in these times. This collaborative volume takes up emerging questions in the field to weave a model for a “trans-Asian” film studies that is cognizant of the durability of the nation state as well as alternative models of situated multiscalar ideas of place and belonging.


SPEAKERS (editors and contributors)
TEJASWINI GANTI (NYU)
JINYING LI (BROWN)
DEBASHREE MUKHERJEE (COLUMBIA)
ALEXANDER ZAHLTEN (HARVARD)
ZHEN ZHANG (NYU)

SPECIAL GUESTS
THOMAS LOOSER (NYU)
SAMUEL JAMIER (NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL)
GINA MARCHETTI (PRATT INSTITUTE)

CO-SPONSORED BY
THE MARTIN SCORSESE DEPARTMENT OF CINEMA STUDIES, TISCH SCHOOL OF THE ARTS, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDDLE EASTERN, SOUTH ASIAN, AND AFRICAN STUDIES (MESAAS) AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

This is an in-person event, open to the public. Prior registration is required at least 24 hours before the start of the event. Non-NYU attendees will receive emailed instructions for building access and may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID upon arrival. NYU attendees must present their NYU ID.

About the speakers:

Tejaswini Ganti is Associate Professor of Anthropology and core faculty in the Program in Culture and Media at New York University. She has been conducting research about the social world and filmmaking practices of the Hindi film industry since 1996 and is the author of Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke U.P. 2012) and Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004; 2nd edition 2013). Her current research examines the politics of language and translation within the Bombay film world, the dubbing of Hollywood content into Hindi, and a social history of Indian cinema in the US.

Jinying Li is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Her first book, Anime’s Knowledge Cultures (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), explores the connection between the anime boom and global geekdom. She is now completing her second book, Walled Media and Mediating Walls. She co-edited two special issues on Chinese animation for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a special issue on regional platforms for Asiascape: Digital Asia. She is currently co-editing the volume The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Digital Media. Jinying is also a filmmaker and produced two documentary TV series that were broadcasted nationwide in China. She is one of the co-writers of the animated feature film Big Fish and Begonia (Dayu Haitang, 2016).

Debashree Mukherjee is an Associate Professor of Film and Media in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University, USA. She is author of Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020) and editor of Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema (2023). Her current book project, Tropical Machines: Extractive Media and Plantation Modernity, develops a media history of South Asian indentured migration and plantation capitalism. Debashree edits the peer-reviewed journal BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies and has published in journals such as Film History, Feminist Media Histories, and Representations.

Alexander Zahlten is Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His recent work touches on topics such as the experience of complex media ecologies, “amateur” film/media production, and the history of the connection of electricity and the film industry in Japan. Publications include his co-edited volume Media Theory in Japan (Duke University Press, 2017, with Marc Steinberg) and his book The End of Japanese Cinema (Duke University Press, 2017) and the article “Between Two Funerals: Zombie Temporality and Media Ecology in Japan” (positions: East Asia Critique, 2021).

Zhen Zhang is a Professor and directs the Asian Film and Media Initiative in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, USA. Her publications include An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896–1937; The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century; DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film; and Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. She also curates film programs and serves as a jury member for various platforms. Her creative practices include poetry, memoire, performance, experimental and documentary filmmaking.


About the special guests:

Thomas Looser is an Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at NYU. His areas of research include Cultural Anthropology and Japanese studies; art, architecture and urban form; new media studies and animation; and critical theory. A senior editor for the journal Mechademia, an editor for Digital Asia, and on the editorial advisory board of ADVA, he is the author of Visioning Eternity: Aesthetics, Politics, and History in the Early Modern Noh Theater, and has published articles in a variety of venues including Boundary 2, Japan Forum, Mechademia, Shingenjitsu, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures (Special Issue on Islands and Islanding; Issue co-editor), and several anthologies.

Samuel Jamier is a distinguished curator, producer, and the Principal of SMLX Consulting, a leading consultancy dedicated to empowering creative teams and enhancing storytelling across Asia and beyond. As the Executive Director of the New York Asian Film Festival/Foundation (NYAFF), Sam brings extensive expertise from his pivotal roles at the Japan Society, The Korea Society, and the French Embassy. In his current role at NYAFF, Sam has transformed the festival from a niche operation focused on Kung Fu flicks and genre movies to a globally influential event, fostering industry relationships across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Sam holds doctoral degrees in English Literature and Comparative Literature with Honors. He is an Agrégation Laureate of École Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris, France, a prestigious institution that boasts Nobel Prize winners among its alumnae. Sam is the first AAPI person to graduate from ENS and is granted lifetime professorship status. His academic journey also includes Lycée L'Assomption Rennes, King's College London, University of Tokyo, and Université Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle, where he was a Professor of English Literature.

Gina Marchetti serves as Chair of the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Her books include Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (California, 1993), From Tian’anmen to Times Square: Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens (Temple, 2006), The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens: Race, Sex, and Cinema (Temple, 2012), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs—The Trilogy (HKUP, 2007), Citing China:  Politics, Postmodernism, and World Cinema (Hawai’i, 2018), and Women Filmmakers and the Visual Politics of Transnational China in the #MeToo Era (Amsterdam, 2024).