This is the first edited volume dedicated to the study of East Asian-German cinema. Its coverage ranges from 1919 to the present, a period which has witnessed an unprecedented degree of global entanglement between Germany and East Asia. In analyzing this hybrid cinema, this volume employs a transnational approach, which highlights the nations’ cinematic encounters and entanglements. It reveals both German perceptions of East Asia and East Asian perceptions of Germany, through analysis of works by both German directors and East Asian/East Asian-German directors. It is hoped that this volume will not only accelerate cross-cultural exchange, but also provide a wider perspective that helps film scholars to see the broader contexts in which these films are produced. It introduces multiple compelling topics, not just immigration, multiculturalism, and exile, but also Japonisme, children’s literature, musical modernity, media hybridity, gender representation, urban space, Cold War divisions, and national identity. It addresses several genres—feature films, essay films, and documentary films. Lastly, by embracing three East Asian cinemas in one volume, this volume serves as an excellent introduction for German cinema students and scholars. It will appeal to international and interdisciplinary audiences, as its contributors represent multiple disciplines and four world regions.

Cinemas from East Asia are among the most exciting and influential in the world. They are attracting popular and critical attention on a global scale, with films from the region circulating as art house, cult, blockbuster and 'extreme' cinema, or as Hollywood remakes. This book explores developments in the global popularity of East Asian cinema, from Chinese martial arts, through Japanese horror, to the burgeoning new Korean cinema, with particular emphasis on crossovers, remakes, hybrids and co-productions. It examines changing cinematic traditions in Asia alongside the 'Asianisation' of western cinema. It explores the dialogue not only between 'East' and 'West', but between different cinemas in the Asia Pacific. What do these trends mean for global cinema? How are co-productions and crossover films changing the nature of Hollywood and East Asian cinemas? The book includes in-depth studies of Park Chan-wook, 'Infernal Affairs', 'Seven Samurai', and 'Princess Mononoke'.

With the economic and political rise of East Asia in the second half of the twentieth century, many Western countries have re-evaluated their links to their Eastern counterparts. Thus, in recent years, Asian German Studies has emerged as a promising branch within interdisciplinary German Studies. This collection of essays examines German-language cultural production pertaining to modern China and Japan, and explicitly challenges orientalist notions by proposing a conception of East and West not as opposites, but as complementary elements of global culture, thereby urging a move beyond national paradigms in cultural studies. Essays focus on the mid-century German-Japanese alliance, Chinese-German Leftist collaborations, global capitalism, travel, identity, and cultural hybridity. The authors include historians and scholars of film and literature, and employ a wide array of approaches from postcolonial, globalization, media, and gender studies. The collection sheds new light on a complex and ambivalentset of international relationships, while also testifying to the potential of Asian German Studies.

This edited volume explores musical encounters and entanglements between Germany and East Asian nations from 1900 to the present. In so doing, it speaks to their dynamic and multi-faceted musical relations in multiple ways. Despite East Asia and Germany being located at opposite ends of the globe, German music has found remarkably fertile soil in East Asia. East Asians have enthusiastically adopted it, while at the same time adding their own musical interpretations. These musical encounters have produced compositions that reflect this mutual influence, stimulating and enriching each other through their entanglement. After more than a century of entanglement, Germany and East Asia have become kindred musical spirits.

How do East Asian cultural heritages in shape film? How are these legacies being revived, or even re-created, by contemporary filmmakers? This collection examines the dynamic interactions between East Asian culture heritages and cinemas in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

From the 1970s onward, “exploitation cinema” as a concept has circulated inside and outside of East Asian nations and cultures in terms of aesthetics and marketing. However, crucial questions about how global networks of production and circulation alter the identity of an East Asian film as “mainstream” or as “exploitation” have yet to be addressed in a comprehensive way. Exploiting East Asian Cinemas serves as the first authoritative guide to the various ways in which contemporary cinema from and about East Asia has trafficked across the somewhat-elusive line between mainstream and exploitation. Focusing on networks of circulation, distribution, and reception, this collection treats the exploitation cinemas of East Asia as mobile texts produced, consumed, and in many ways re-appropriated across national (and hemispheric) boundaries. As the processes of globalization have decoupled products from their nations of origin, transnational taste cultures have declared certain works as “art” or “trash,” regardless of how those works are received within their native locales. By charting the routes of circulation of notable films from Japan, China, and South Korea, this anthology contributes to transnationally-accepted formulations of what constitutes “East Asian exploitation cinema.”

East Asian cinema has become a worldwide phenonemon, and directors such as Park Chan-wook, Wong Kar Wai, and Takashi Miike have become household names. Dekalog 4: On East Asian Filmmakers solicits scholars from Japan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, North America, and the U.K. to offer unique readings of selected East Asian directors and their works. Directors examined include Zhang Yimou, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Rithy Panh, Kinji Fukasaku, and Jia Zhangke, and the volume includes one of the first surveys of Japanese and Chinese female filmmakers, providing singular insight into East Asian film and the filmmakers that have brought it global recognition.