越境するポピュラー文化と＜想像のアジア＞ ： 投稿記事

This is Laikwan from Hong Kong. I am proposing to discuss in the workshop issues related to transnational cinema, and specifically I will examine a project called "Focus First Cut" (2006), which includes 6 films of 6 new directors, who are all ethnically Chinese but coming from different places: mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. "Focus First Cut" represents a trend of similar film projects seen in recent years. These projects are producer-based, supervised by a strong and experienced producer, but featuring a combination of new directors from different Chinese cultural backgrounds. The specific director-producer package is characterized by an interesting set of tensions and collaborations between the two roles. The directors are young and fresh, often below thirty years old, and they tell stories around their own experiences, with a microscopic tendency exploring the everyday lives of a particularly group of people, sometimes even in a deliberately parochial sense. The producers, on the other hand, are experienced, cosmopolitan, and have elaborate finance and distribution connections. I would like to examine how such combinations fit into a specific transnational mode of production, and how the concept of "New Asian Cinema" is constructed accordingly.

Laikwan Pang, Professor, Dept of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (email: lkpang@cuhk.edu.hk)