Critical trends in transnational cinema: Inter-Asian productions and exchanges

ABSTRACT

In light of the shift from the first phase to the second phase of transnational cinema studies, this special issue aims to examine a set of practices of transnational cinema that have been taking place within South and East Asia. In exploring transnational cinema activities in the form of transnational remakes, co-productions, cross-contamination of genres, diasporic and (post)colonial cinemas, as well as contemporary documentary film festivals, this issue puts the spotlight on critical trends in transnational cinemas occurring beyond the Western spheres of influences. Focusing on practical applications of case studies across China, Korea, India and United Arab Emirates, this special issue contributes to the debates on the definition and practical applications for research on transnational cinema studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational
• South-South
• South Asia
• China
• inter-asian
• co-productions

Introduction

At a time of resurgent nationalisms and of increasing fortifications of (actual and symbolic) borders, this special issue examines transnational cinema practices that challenge, and move across, these boundaries, and aims to promote a reflection on the (social, cultural, political and economic) value of international exchanges and collaborations within the context of Asia. Indeed, notwithstanding the aforementioned tendency to implement border policing and the revival of nationalist sentiments, South and East Asian cinemas retain a strong transnational character, as not only genres and themes are borrowed and exchanged across borders, but also the popularity of the Indian, Chinese and Korean film industries (the main focus of this issue), extends well beyond their national borders – within Asia as well as in the West.

And yet, resurgent celebrations of the nation-state and transnational connections are not mutually exclusive: as Lim eloquently explained ‘some national ambitions can no longer be contained within fixed geographical boundaries as they are increasingly projected onto the global stage and procured through transnational means’ (2019, 1). Transnational cinema studies have acknowledged this ambivalence for, if transnational cinema was initially understood with the focus on a national/transnational binary (Lu 1997; Higson 2000), scholars have progressively moved away from this dichotomy, recognising that, as Chris Berry further argues ‘no transnational cinema exists without encountering and negotiating national spaces and cultures’ (Berry. 2010, 112).

One of the most significant areas of growth in international development in the last few years has been the phenomenon of South-South cooperation, which has seen an exchange of resources and knowledge across countries in the global South promoting a global strength of the South (Prashad 2007). This is not a new phenomenon and can be traced back to the anti-colonial and independence movements through the mid-twentieth century, which saw several countries gain their independence and stride towards national development. These postcolonial countries attempted to through the development of bodies such as SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), NAM (Non-Aligned Movement), ASEAN (Association of South East Nations) and others promoted intergovernmental cooperation towards economic, military and socio-cultural integration in the region.

It is perhaps more difficult thinking about South-South cooperation for Asia when there are ‘no ready ingredients for the regions that are opened up for a generalised cultural production of a revised continent think’ (Spivak 2008, 212). How do we then think of this region in terms of cultural production and cinema? Spivak (ibid) rightly agrees that whilst regional economic initiatives may seem unifying, they do not provide a ‘specifically cultural cement’. This can be traced to the uneven colonial experiences and plurality of Asia.

2009 has however been a breakthrough of some sort with the release of the Bollywood film- Chandni Chowk to China (Nikhil Advani) which saw Indian films gaining a foothold in China. This was formalised via the Co-production treaty of 2014 between India and China as part of the year of exchanges which saw the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in India and the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television in China establish a treaty to expand and develop ‘cultural and economic exchanges’ which would contribute to the ‘enhancement of relations between the two countries in the audio visual field’ (Karan and Schaefer 2020, 194). This saw an increase in the number of Indian films released in China.

Furthering an exploration of South-South cooperation in the context of Asian cinema, the main purpose of this special issue is to move away from an Anglocentric approach in the study of transnational cinema to focus on cinema industries and film practices that take place within South and East Asia and to reflect the shift towards the second phase of transnational cinema studies in terms of the conceptual implications of actual cases. Through the analysis of different case studies including transnational remakes, co-productions, cross-contamination of film genres, contemporary documentary film festivals and the representation of the diasporic experience and diasporic filmmaking in different contexts, this issue explores the critical trends in transnational cinema studies with the focus on South and East Asia.

The second phase of transnational cinema studies

Scholarly research on transnational cinema has, for a long time, specifically focused its attention on defining the boundaries of transnational cinema studies, as debates have privileged reflections on ‘definitions, the terms of reference and specific themes’, (Shaw 2017, 296–7). And yet, the scholarly debate on definitions remains unsettled, mainly due to the multiple interpretations given to ‘transnational cinema’ in film studies. To take just one example, Berry has catalogued various meanings of transnational cinema:

[The potential meaning of transnational cinema] can be traced back to the beginnings of cinema itself. Or it can be dated from the impact of globalization in the cinema. It can refer to big-budget blockbuster cinema associated with the operations of global corporate capital. Or it can refer to small-budget diasporic and exilic cinema. It can refer to films that challenge national identity, or it can refer to the consumption of foreign films as part of the process of a discourse about what national identity is. (2010, 114).

Somehow echoing Berry’s reflections on the multiple meanings attached to the concept of transnational cinema, Fisher. and Smith (2019, 115) propose that ‘transnational cinema’ covers the ‘processes of industrial collaboration across borders, of the “localisation” of filmic products as they traverse the globe, or of foreign influences coming to bear upon the production of the film text … ’. Due to the different interpretations and vague usages of the term, transnational cinema is often used as an interchangeable word with ‘global cinema’, ‘international cinema’ in a variety of different and contradictory ways (Berry. 2010, 114).

Fully aware the variety of interpretations and loose uses of the term, leading scholars from this field urge to not to discuss transnational cinema only in abstract terms, but also to consider more practical applications for research. Higbee and Lim, for example, call for a ‘critical transnationalism’ which includes both a critical reflection of the concept of transnational cinema as well as examine its deployment in specific cases (Higbee and Lim 2010, 10). Similarly, Mette Hjort also emphasises the importance of ‘the conceptual implications of actual cases’ (Hjort 2010, 16). This stance resonates with some recent discussions of the current situation of transnational cinema studies. For example, Fisher and Smith urge that it is imperative to think about ‘applying transnational perspectives across a range of different contexts’ (2019, 115).

The rise of Asia

In light of the shift towards the second phase of transnational cinema studies, this special issue explores the practices of transnational cinema with a focus on Asia to think further about defining and researching transitional cinema. From a theoretical perspective, while there has been a significant amount of scholarly research on transnational cinema studies, there have been relatively few publications that have specifically interrogated the transnational element between East and South Asia cinema. In fact, many scholars (e.g. Bâ and Higbee 2012, 12) have proposed the need to ‘break away from the Euro-American dominance of theoretical models, to explore new theoretical positions that can emerge from sources outside of the traditional Western spheres of influence as well as understanding how case studies drawn from a range of global film cultures can inform contemporary debates in film studies’.

Gruenewald and Wang (2018) have argued that there is a seismic shift in the global film markets as Chinese cinema pivots to take on Hollywood both in terms of the number of film productions as well as box office success. From a practical perspective, the rise of Asian cinema has brought some interesting observations. To begin with, the rise of Asian countries such as China, India and Korea on the world stage has been coupled with a growing interest in their film productions, both inside and outside Asia. According to a report from Motion Picture America (2019), the global box office market reached 42.2 USD billion in 2019. As the largest market, the U.S./Canada box office market was declined by 4% to 11.4 USD billion compared to 2018. In comparison, the Asia Pacific market experienced 4% increase to 17.8 USD billion. For example, the top market outside the U.S./Canada market, China rises to 9.3 USD billion in 2019. (MPA 2019, 12). It is also expected that China will surpass the U.S./Canada market as the biggest market by the end of 2020 (PwC 2019). In addition to the increasing size of the box office markets of China, South Korea market surpassed the UK in 2019 to reach the fourth box office market position to 1.6 USD billion (MPA 2019, 13). Noteworthily, the stunning performance of Korean film Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2019) not only made Oscars’ history as the first foreign language winner of Best Picture in 2020, but it might also lead to ‘a new era of transnationalism’ which will ‘increase the representation of non-US work in all other categories’(Hoad 2020).

In Asian popular culture, of which cinema is a very significant component, whilst studies on East- West flows of cinema production and distribution have tended to focus on box office records and cultural representations (Marchetti and Tan 2007), there have also been an exploration on areas such as emotion and audience. Dissanayake (2003) discusses melodrama as a way of thinking of Asian cinema across China and India. He argues:

A study of melodrama in relation to Asian cinemas enables us to understand better the dynamics of modernisation taking place in Asia. It helps us to understand some vital dimensions of social modernisation in terms of cultural differences. As a consequence, the dialectic between social existence and cultural production gains in depth and definition.

Dissanayake’s focus on melodrama and aesthetic as a means to bridge Asian film productions across South and East Asia was also a mechanism of facing up to Hollywood, to borrow Lopez’s term (2000). Lopez writes that Hollywood has been the nemesis of national cinemas throughout the world which have precluded and prejudiced the industrial development of indigenous productions. This is not to take away from the fact that Hollywood and Western cinema still continue to hold sway over the global market though in recent years there have been some decline.

Indeed, notwithstanding the aforementioned tendency to implement border policing and the revival of nationalist sentiments, the rising popularity of South and East Asian cinemas retain a strong transnational character. Not only genres and themes are borrowed and exchanged across borders, but also the popularity of film industries extend well beyond their national borders – within Asia as well as in the West. For example, Collette Balmain discusses the Bunshinsaba film series from Korea to China. Further, Clelia Clini’s essay analyses the integration of a martial arts style of fighting inspired by Hong Kong martial arts films within Indian popular films of the 1970s. Additionally, Yanling Yang’s essay provides examples on the boom of the popularity of Indian films in China. For example, the Indian Film Dangal (dir. Nitesh Tiwari, 2016) has made the top foreign box office revenue ($193 million) outside of Hollywood in China market (The Numbers 2016).

Furthermore, Lim (2019) recently revisited concepts of transnational cinema and proposed a deeper engagement with the notion of soft power for the analysis of such competitive and concessional forms of transnationalism. He argued that transnational cinema can serve ‘as a conceptual framework that is both inescapably national and inadvertently nation-less’ and the notion of soft power has some currency here. ‘The study of transnational cinema would benefit from engaging more fully with the notion of “soft power” (2019, 2). After all, the operation of soft power is invariably transnational, as one country strives to influence other countries through the attractiveness of three resources, namely culture, political and foreign policies’. (Nye 2004, 11 cited in Lim 2019, 3).

Indeed, the role of film in promoting India’s soft power has been at the centre of scholarly debates for the past two decades (see Athique 2018; Blarel 2018; Thussu 2008, 2016). While analyses of China and Korea’s economic growth have been increasingly discussed alongside the potential of their cultural industries for implementing their soft power (Lim 2019). The dynamic relationship between the national and transnational emerges thus clearly in the analysis of these film industries, which, while crossing borders, export the national in the international arena.

Ganti (2012) describes how the Hindi film industry in India has undergone a gentrification – one of the main changes which characterise the post millennium industry. According to her, film makers are striving to attain a ‘universal hit’- a film that would have a broad audience appeal going beyond the distribution circuits of small town and urban cities of India. Whilst films such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2002) have created aspirational films which have had huge success in the overseas market especially in places like USA and United Kingdom (Dasgupta and Datta 2018) which have a sizeable diasporic population, in recent years we have seen films such as 3 idiots (2009), Dangal (2016), Secret Superstar (2017) and Padman (2018) have gained a huge audience in South East Asia making Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar familiar names. Despite the cultural significance of these films which are embedded in ‘Indian values’, their transnational success can be attributed to the universal messages of education and social change which found resonance with India’s Asian neighbours. Yau’s (2018) interview with R. Balki director of Padman explained shared cultural values between Indian and Chinese audience such as motions, importance of family and love of song and dance. Balki explained ‘The emotions of Indian and Chinese are similar. They connect with the Indian characters’.

But the negotiation ‘of national spaces and cultures’ mentioned by Berry (2010, 112) also implies a step away from a Eurocentric perspective of how such films might be read (Higbee and Lim 2010) and the acknowledgement of the individual and collective narratives of migration, exile and displacement as the key component of transnational cinemas (Higbee and Lim 2010). Indeed, narratives of migration and displacement engage with the transnational, touching upon social, cultural and economic concerns which emerge with the crossing of national boundaries. And yet, as Higbee and Lim argue, the very term ‘transnational cinema’ runs the risk of ‘celebrating the supranational flow or transnational exchange of peoples, images and cultures at the expense of the specific cultural, historical or ideological context in which these exchanges take place’ (2010, 11–12). In this respect, Devasundaram’s article on City of Life (2009, dir. Ali F. Mostafa) and Pinky Memsaab (2018, dir. Shazia Ali Khan), not only shifts the focus away from the diasporic movement from South Asia to the West to concentrate on the trajectory of migration from South Asia to the Middle East, but it also puts the spotlight on the uneven dynamics of economic power that critically affect the experiences of underprivileged migrants to the city of Dubai. Considering that people of South Asian origin, according to data published in 2013, represents the 90% of the workforce in UAE, Devasundaram’s article offers a welcome analysis of the too often overlooked South to South migration in diasporic cinema. Last but not the least, beyond exporting (and expanding) national concerns outside the boundaries of the state, transnational films also export themes and concerns into foreign territories, where they are then appropriated and redeployed according to indigenous concerns.

In this respect, international film festivals appear as especially significant spaces which allow the audience to engage with national and transnational concerns. As Wong eloquently explained, film festivals offer a platform to discuss specific national issues as they are continuously engaged ‘in the complicated imagination of nation building’ (2011, 159), but at the same time the variety of their offers promote an engagement with topics of international concern, or, in some cases, festival themselves can be specifically designed for the promotion of ‘transnational linkages’ (Wong 160). Seen as spaces which promote a dialogue between audiences and filmmakers, as well as cultural, economic and political actors, film festivals thus appear as spaces which allow for the articulation of ‘a form of public spheres’ (Kishore 2013, 738). Documentary film festivals in particular, as explained in Giulia Battaglia’s essay, are spaces of both cultural activism and cultural performance, as artistic performances promote active engagement with social, political and economic concerns, which, in the case of India, are often marginalised by the mainstream media, and whose reverberations echoes beyond national boundaries.

In light of the highly relevant quote, ‘we should return to the specificity of the current situation in order to understand the specificity of “transnational” as a concept and a practice’ (Berry. 2010, 119), this Special Issue aims to further our understanding of how transnational flows inner-Asian cinemas and engage with vital issues in scholarship on transnational cinemas.

The essays

The range of scholarly writing included in this special issue span from the practice of transnational remakes, international collaborations and co-productions, the combination of ‘art’ and ‘activism’ in the area of documentary practice, and diasporic filmmaking, and they comprise experience and knowledge from a wide range of geographical areas including China, India, Korea and United Arab Emirates. The essays that follow, in their different accents and from their distinct vantage points of enunciation, touch upon the related issues including regionality, soft power, the globalisation of film genres, film festival studies and diasporic dynamic, thereby offering insight into the breadth and depth of the ‘transnational cinemas’ field.

First, Colette Balmain’s essay deals with regionality in East Asian cinema. It explores the Bunshinsaba film series as an example of Inter-Asian cinematic dialogues and exchanges. By pointing to the increasing importance of regionality in East Asian cinematic production in which cultural proximity allows cultural translations as demonstrated by the growing prevalence of co-productions across the region, the essay argues that East Asian cinema is marked by heterogeneity rather than homogeneity in that despite transnational flows and border crossings, the representation of the ‘Pen Fairy’ in the films under discussion is significantly different across the Korean and mainland Chinese incarnations.

From the China–Korea co-production, Yanling Yang’s essay moves to explore the practice of China–India film co-production in the context of Inter-Asian soft power collaboration. The essay examines the recent trend of co-production between China and India since the singing of the Co-production Agreement in 2014. Drawing on analysis of the Agreement and policies designed to facilitate co-production, interviews with film practitioners and evaluations on the existing three China–India films Xuan Zang (2016), Kong Fu Yoga (2017) and Buddies in India (2017), the essay not only discloses the misuse of the term co-production but also indicates the politically driven feature of China–India collaboration in practice. It argues that co-production has been part of bilateral diplomatic strategy aligning film with China’s statecraft, which provides an alternative perspective beyond the culturally driven and financially driven dimensions of co-production. By mapping out this newly emerging terrain of China–India collaboration, this essay contributes to prevent the vagueness and conflations that the use of the term and practice appears to invite in the discourse of co-production. It also contributes to the current scholarly debates on de-westernization in the transitional cinema and Chinese and Indian films and their associated soft power.

Then, Clelia Clini’s essay analyses the appeal of Hong Kong martial arts films in 1970s India and the integration of martial arts within Indian popular films of the period in relation to (post)colonial discourses on Asian masculinities. Drawing upon Yvonne Tasker’s examination of the ‘anticolonial narrative’ embedded in Hong Kong martial arts films (Tasker [1997] 2012, 504), her article discusses the incorporation of a martial arts style of combat within Indian popular films as a response to colonial and orientalist tropes of Asian effeminacy and softness (Said 1978) and to the post-independence hero of Hindi cinema. The article thus argues that martial arts became the means through which the 1970s Hindi action hero articulated an alternative, anticolonial, version of Indian masculinity.

The relationship between colonial and postcolonial culture will be discussed further in relation to documentary film festivals in India. Giulia Battaglia’s article analyses contemporary documentary film festivals in India conceiving as a combination of cultural performance and cultural activism. Through a combination of first-person experience in the field and historical research, her article argues for identifying a legacy of contemporary documentary film festivals not only in the most recent history of political activism and filmmaking, but also in early cinematic practices of film exhibition during the colonial period of the Indian subcontinent. Further, Battaglia discusses the role that independent documentary film festivals such as Vibgyor play in promoting inter-regional dialogue and proposes that bringing together the lenses of cultural performance and cultural activism is a useful way to address what are somewhat rigidly perceived as distinct fields and practices of ‘art’ and ‘activism’ in the area of documentary practice in India. The article contributes to the emerging literature on documentary film history and documentary film festivals in India and makes a valuable move in connecting early documentary history with the performative-political space of contemporary film festivals.

Finally, Ashvin Devasundaram’s article analyses the representation of the subaltern experience of South Asian characters in the city of Dubai in the films City of Life (Ali F. Mostafa, 2009) and Pinky Memsaab (Shazia Ali Khan 2018). His analysis proposes that in these films subaltern South Asian subjects are not merely dislocated objects or continuums of alterity when transported to distant exilic global hubs such as Dubai. They carry the potentiality of acting as internal agents, by working within capitalism’s mainstream power structures to perform informality as a mode of organic and endogenous resistance. Although megacities such as New York, London, Los Angeles, Sidney or Kolkata have received significant attention in the field of classical urban and cultural studies, Dubai, as hypercapitalist centres of trade and commerce, fiercely competing with megacities of the Global North in opulence and opportunities, have not found as much attention (Froilan and Al Youha, 2013). Providing reflection on the city space of Dubai through an intensive reading of the urban poor, specifically, migrant workers, this research offers a valuable contribution to the field of crisscrossing urban and subaltern studies.

Conclusion

Taken together, through examining the deployment of transnational cinemas across China, Korea, India and United Arab Emirates, this collection of essays aims at putting the spotlight on some critical trends of transnational cinemas in the South and East Asia. The work in this special issue also points toward possible future avenues of research such as the expanded investigation of practical perspective of transnational cinema studies beyond the Western spheres of influences especially Hollywood in Asia. Meanwhile, it offers more balanced, nuanced approaches to further understanding of the definition and practice of transnational cinema studies.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editors of Transnational Screens and the peer reviewers- Jennifer Coates, Nikki Lee, Louis bayman, Iain Robert Smith, Ece Algan, Karen Gabriel, Shweta Kishore, Tilottama Karlekar, Kustav Bakshi and Burce Celik for their productive feedback and suggestions. Finally, thanks to our contributors for making this special issue possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Yanling Yang’s work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust under Grant [ECF-2018-571]. The papers emerged from a series of workshops through funding received by Clelia Clini and Rohit K Dasgupta by the Institute for Media and Creative Industries.

Notes on contributors

Yanling Yang

Yanling Yang is a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow and lecturer at Bangor University, where she works as a PI on the funded research project Film Co-productions as Soft Power for the UK and China. Yanling’s former work experience as a media practitioner strongly contributes to her teaching and research, she worked as a Project Manager, Journalist in the media industries both in China and the UK. Her main research interests include film studies, cultural policy, digital media, soft power and international communication.

Clelia Clini

Clelia Clini is a Research Associate at Loughborough University London, where she works on the project Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination: British Asian memory, Identity and Community After Partition. Her research interests lie at the intersection of migration and diaspora studies, South Asian postcolonial cinema and literature, race and gender studies and cultural sociology. Before joining Loughborough University, she was a Research Associate at UCL, where she worked on a project on forced displacement, creativity and wellbeing. Clelia has taught Media, Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at John Cabot University and at The American University of Rome (2012–2016).

Rohit K. Dasgupta

Rohit K. Dasgupta is Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University. He has recently joined as Senior Lecturer of Cultural Industries at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Digital Queer Cultures in India (Routledge, 2017) and 100 Essential Indian Films (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019). His edited volumes include Styling South Asian Youth Cultures (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Queering Digital India (Edinburgh UP, 2018)