The Animist Imagination in East Asian Cinema
Seiten
2025
Amsterdam University Press (Verlag)
9789048563999 (ISBN)
Amsterdam University Press (Verlag)
9789048563999 (ISBN)
This book explores the animist imagination in contemporary East Asian cinema, where natural elements like winds, trains, balloons, and snowflakes become living entities that co-exist with humans.
Whispering winds, speeding trains, wandering balloons, and swirling snowflakes—these are the living entities that humans find themselves enmeshed with in their ecological co-flourishing in contemporary East Asian cinema. Pao-chen Tang theorizes and analyzes this animist imagination—a new mode of filmmaking that delves into both the definition of the cinematic medium and how to live with the nonhuman. Moving images are animate beings and the animism of cinema further compels an eye-opening vision to examine East Asian history and ecological anxieties of our times. The shamanic protagonists of the animist imagination transform the worldly and medial figurations onscreen into thought experiments on human-nonhuman relationality, modelling for the viewers anti-anthropocentric forms of existence and action. The book distills this form of agency through a systematic analysis of narrative structures, stylistic devices, and cultural implications in a stunning demonstration of a world viewed and enacted otherwise. This book was supported by the Publication Subsidy Scheme of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Whispering winds, speeding trains, wandering balloons, and swirling snowflakes—these are the living entities that humans find themselves enmeshed with in their ecological co-flourishing in contemporary East Asian cinema. Pao-chen Tang theorizes and analyzes this animist imagination—a new mode of filmmaking that delves into both the definition of the cinematic medium and how to live with the nonhuman. Moving images are animate beings and the animism of cinema further compels an eye-opening vision to examine East Asian history and ecological anxieties of our times. The shamanic protagonists of the animist imagination transform the worldly and medial figurations onscreen into thought experiments on human-nonhuman relationality, modelling for the viewers anti-anthropocentric forms of existence and action. The book distills this form of agency through a systematic analysis of narrative structures, stylistic devices, and cultural implications in a stunning demonstration of a world viewed and enacted otherwise. This book was supported by the Publication Subsidy Scheme of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Pao-chen Tang is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sydney. He is the co-editor of Socializing Medicine: Health Humanities and East Asian Media (2025).
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Cinematic Animism and Its Shamans
Chapter One: The Child and the Balloon
Chapter Two: The Child and the Train
Chapter Three: Spectrum Animality
Chapter Four: In the Snow
Chapter Five: A Tale of the Evil Wind
Coda
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 28.05.2025 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Critical Asian Cinemas |
| Zusatzinfo | 17 Illustrations, black and white |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 156 x 234 mm |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft | |
| ISBN-13 | 9789048563999 / 9789048563999 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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