Theorizing Colonial Cinema takes on the daunting task of revisiting the story of film, as Nayoung Aimee Kwon and Takushi Odagiri write in their introduction. How does one tell the story of cinema—where does one begin, and which story does one tell? What would the story of film look like if the “colonial question” was taken out of the margins and made the very framework through which cinema is understood? they ask (5), and it is this question that frames the volume.
While much of existing scholarship on colonial cinema has been limited to specific national contexts, Theorizing Colonial Cinema instead offers the transcolonial and the interregional as methods. This volume focuses on connections, entanglements, and intimacies that confuse and blur neat and distinct histories of colonial cinemas in Asia. In this regard, Theorizing Colonial Cinema is a timely and urgent contribution to colonial cinema studies, as it foregrounds transpacific...
