Description
Historically, both the United States and the Soviet Union viewed cinema as a powerful weapon in the Cold War’s battle to win hearts and minds—not just in Europe, but also in Asia. During this period, cataclysmic shifts occurred in the culture and history of Asian cinemas as well as in the latitude of US cultural diplomacy in Asia. Rather than treating the cultural Cold War as a transient temporal period, this roundtable examines the ambivalent, overlapping, and enduring marks the Cold War framework has left on Asian cinemas and societies and pushes the boundaries of Cold War scholarship by attending to the ontology of Asian societies’ efforts to navigate decolonization, nation-building, and Cold War politics.Foregrounding Asia, we reflect on explorations and findings resulting from the collaborative project Remapping Cold War in Asian Cinemas (Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming in 2024). This roundtable features five panelists who will examine the global Cold War and discuss the unique agencies and forms of resistance and negotiation that Asian societies, through their cinematic productions and cultural exchanges, deployed during the Cold War. Eric Sasono will analyze the film Tauhid (directed by Asrul Sani) to discuss the place of Islam during the cultural Cold War in Indonesia. Ishihara Yūjirō’s engagement with Cold War geopolitics will be discussed by Hiroshi Kitamura, who will also provide a historical context for Japan's political, economic, and cultural interests in the 1950s and 1960s. Elmo Gonzaga will discuss the Philippine film icon Fernando Poe Jr and how the dichotomous imagination of Cold War culture influenced the shifting aesthetics and politics of FPJ's films from the 1960s to the 1970s. In his analysis, Wen-Qing Ngoei will examine The 7th Dawn (1964) and King Rat (1965) as cultural arenas where the United States envisioned, executed, and contested victory over Asian communism. Sangjoon Lee will explore the South Korea–initiated inter-Asian coproduction of espionage films during the 1960s, with particular reference to the South Korea–Hong Kong coproduction of SOS Hong Kong and Special Agent X-7, both produced and released in 1966. Lastly, Darlene Machell Espena will serve as the chair and introduce the panelists.
| Period | 11 Jul 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | AAS-in-Asia 2024 Conference : Global Asias : Latent Histories, Manifest Impacts |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Yogyakarta, IndonesiaShow on map |