Analyses the cinematic and social significance of the star phenomenon in Southeast Asia.

Many stars from China, Japan and Korea are the most popular and instantly recognizable in the world. East Asian Film Stars brings together some of the world's leading cinema scholars to offer their insights into the work of regional and transnational screen legends, contemporary superstars and mysterious cult personas.

This book explores the collaborative models of film production, distribution, exhibition and reception that have enabled greater co-operation and integration between Asia's film industries.

Fighting Stars provides a rich and diverse account of the emergence and legacies of Hong Kong martial arts cinema stars. Tracing the meanings and influence of stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi , and Donnie Yen against the shifting backdrops of the Hong Kong film industry, the contributors to this important volume highlight martial arts stars' cultural reach, both on a local and global scale. Each of the chapters, written by a host of renowned international scholars, focuses on an individual film star, considering issues such as martial arts practices and philosophies, gender and age, national identities and conflicts, cinematic genres and aesthetic choices in order to understand their local and transnational cultural influence.

Deflecting the attention from Hollywood, Stars in World Cinema fills an important gap in the study of film by bringing together Star Studies and World Cinema. A team of international scholars here bring their expertise and in-depth knowledge of world cultures and cinema to the study of stars and stardom from six continents, exploring their cultures, their local history and their global relevance. Chapters look at the role of acting, music, singing, painting and martial arts in the making of stars from Australia's indigenous population, Austria, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Japan, North and South Korea, Nigeria, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union, Spain, North and South America. Since the very beginnings of cinema, actors and stars have been central to its history and have been one of the medium's defining characteristics. They have also been fundamental to the marketing of cinema and have played a major part in the reception of films in many cultures. Stars in World Cinema examines stardom and the circulation of stars across borders, analysing how local star systems or non-systems construct stardom around the world. Contributors put into practice their local knowledge of history, language and cultural systems, to consider issues of hybridity, boundary crossing, the mobility of stardom, and embodied spectatorship, in order to further the understanding of stars in light the of recent interest in reception theory. Rooted in a multidisciplinary and polycentric approach, this book throws light on unexpected connections between stars and stardoms from different parts of the world, cutting across chronology, geographies and film history.

This book details original research into the practices and discourse of multimedia stardom alongside changing social and cultural landscapes in Hong Kong since 1980. It examines the cultural and sociological significance of stardom in the region, and the conditions which gave rise to such famous stars as Jackie Chan. This book elaborates the distinction between multimedia stardom and celebrity, asserting that in Hong Kong stardom has been central in the production and consumption of local media, while demonstrating the importance of multimedia stardom as part of the ‘cultural Chinese’ mediascape and transnational popular culture from both historical and contemporary contexts.

Film directors from East Asia frequently win top prizes at international film festivals, but few books have been published about them. The films of these countries reflect periods of great political turmoil, rapid modernization in the 20th century, and the conflicts between modern lifestyles and traditional values. Covering films and filmmakers from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and North and South Korea, this is an ideal reference work on all the major directors, including Akira Kurosawa, Won Kar Wai, Takeshi Kitano, Zhang Yimou, Shohei Imamura, Tsui Hark, and Takeshi Miike. Providing individual analyses on more than 100 key East Asian films and with checklists for the films of each country, this guide to an incredibly rich and diverse body of work is useful for both ardent fans and serious students.

This volume points to the limits of models such as regional, national, and transnational, and develops ‘network’ as a conceptual category to study cinemas of India. Through grounded and interdisciplinary research, it shows how film industries located in disparate territories have not functioned as isolated units and draws attention to the industrial traffic – of filmic material, actors, performers, authors, technicians, genres, styles, sounds, expertise, languages, and capital, across trans-regional contexts -- since the inception of cinema. It excavates histories of film production, distribution and exhibition, and their connections beyond regional and national boundaries, and between places, industrial practices, and multiple media. The chapters in this volume address a range of themes such as transgressive female figures; networks of authors and technicians; trans-regional production links and changing technologies, and new media geographies. By tracking manifold changes in the contexts of transforming media, and inter-connections between diverse industrial nodal points, this book expands the critical vocabulary in media and production studies and foregrounds new methods for examining cinema. A generative account of industrial networks, this volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of film studies, cinema studies, media studies, production studies, media sociology, gender studies, South Asian studies, and cultural studies.

This volume of original essays fills a significant research gap in Chinese film studies by offering an interdisciplinary, comparative examination of ethnic Chinese film stars from the silent period to the era of globalization. Whereas studies of stars and stardom have developed considerably in the West over the past two decades, there is no single book in English that critically addresses issues related to stars and stardom in Chinese culture. Chinese Film Stars offers exemplary readings of historically, geographically and aesthetically multifaceted star phenomena. An international line up of contributors test a variety of approaches in making sense of discourses of stars and stardom in China and the US, explore historical contexts in which Chinese film stars are constructed and transformed in relation to changing sociopolitical conditions, and consider issues of performance and identity specific to individual stars through chapter-by-chapter case studies. The essays explore a wide range of topics such as star performance, character type, media construction, political propaganda, online discourses, autobiographic narration, as well as issues of gender, genre, memory and identity. Including fifteen case studies of individual Chinese stars and illustrated with film stills throughout, this book is an essential read for students of Chinese film, media and cultural studies.

This monograph offers a cutting edge perspective on the study of Chinese film stars by advancing a “linguaphonic” model, moving away from a conceptualization of transnational Chinese stardom reliant on the centrality of either action or body. It encompasses a selection of individual personalities from the most iconic Bruce Lee, Michelle Yeoh, and Maggie Cheung to the not-yet-full-fledged Takeshi Kaneshiro, Jay Chou, and Tang Wei to the newest Fan Binging, Liu Yifei, Wen Ming-Na, and Sammi Cheng who are exemplary to the star-making practices in the designated sites of articulations. This volume notably pivots on specific phonic modalities – spoken forms of tongues, manners of enunciation, styles of vocalization -- as means to mine ethnic and ideological underpinnings of Chinese stardom. By indicating a methodological shift from the visual-based to aural-based vectors, it asserts the phonic as a legitimate bearing that can generate novel vigor in the reimagination of Chineseness. By exhausting the critical affordability of the phonic, this book unravels the polemics of visuality and aurality, body and voice, as well as onscreen personae and offscreen existence, remapping the contours of the ethnic fame-making in the global mediascape.