Screening Asian Americans edited and with an introduction by Peter X. Feng [in AsianWeek]
01 Jan, by in Adult Readers, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Repost
Feng’s title is ingeniously layered: “Screening Asian Americans” refers to at least three ways in which Asian Americans are screened – how they are evaluated, how their images are projected, and how...
This time, Feng gets the whole book to himself. And if you read nothing else about film, read this introduction. His questions about identity – who defines it, how it’s defined, can...
Part of the PocketEssentials series out the U.K., Ang Lee is one of the latest available additions to an eclectic mix of film-related titles. While it reads a bit like a glorified student project,...
Also from the PocketEssentials series. A quick guide to the man who single-handedly changed the face of martial arts films, from his San Francisco birth to his child actor days in Hong...
PocketEssentials again, published in the U.K. in 2000 and released here late last year. A compilation of interviews, articles, and reviews about Hong Kong’s “gangster gun operas” [as opposed to...
Another slim volume that offers a concise, informative overview of mainland Chinese cinema, with a focus on the last half-decade. Chinese cinema history can be loosely summarized in six generations, beginning with...
A thoroughly enjoyable combination of memoir entwined with film, social, and political history by a professor from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, which graduated the...
Richie, one of Japan’s most famous ex-patriots, points out in his introduction that some 90% of all Japanese films made before 1945 were destroyed, whether during the 1923...
We’re talking major tome – more than 800 pages devoted to a “joint biography” of two of the most famous names is film history. Because no single biography about either...
The ultimate guidebook to anime, set up just like an encyclopedia (hence the name), with detailed entries in alphabetical order. Quite an impressive, amazing feat.
Review: 
The most difficult of the titles, although its premise is interesting – that the history of Japanese film is inextricably linked to the history of Japanese capitalism, both of which are approximately...
Forget Hollywood, hello Bollywood: With 12 million people going to the movies every day from a potential audience of a billion, India is home to the largest film industry in the entire world. The international phenomenon...
Part of the British Film Institute’s Film Classics, a series which highlights 360 landmark films from throughout the world, this volume focuses on one of India’s enduring classics. Released in October 1957, Mother India...
One of India’s most enduring filmmakers, Yash Chopra is known for his lavish, fantastically romantic films. Dwyer, obviously an avid fan and self-professed friend, offers the life story of a man whose life motto...
One of the latest in the Pocketessentials series. And the perfect last title – a book devoted to how the enemy Asian alien is portrayed in the white man’s film world. Caught...
Laying a Golden Egg
Everything – let me say that again – everything about this book is fabulous. So you’re off the hook: you can stop reading this review right now.
A...
Reading the essays collected in Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism, edited by Darrell Y. Hamamoto and Sandra Liu, you might think that Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige is the only Asian American...