Coproducing Asia

Locating Japanese–Chinese Regional Film and Media

2014
Author:

Stephanie DeBoer

Reframes our understanding of regional coproduction and East Asian film and media

Based on rare archival research as well as interviews with producers, Coproducing Asia provides compelling frames for understanding the significance of film and media coproduction in East Asia. Stephanie DeBoer guides readers through a rich genealogy of regional film and media coproduction, introducing innovative methods for their examination across decades, locations, and scales of production in East Asia and beyond.

Coproducing Asia is a wonderful book that will have genuine and lasting significance. Stephanie DeBoer has produced a nuanced and practical account of the tensions and difficulties involved not only in the too rarely studied creative and business negotiations enabling a co-production, but also in the asymmetrical cultural investments and historical ‘hauntings’ at stake in such ventures and active in their differing sites of reception. It’s a tour de force.

Meaghan Morris, author of Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture

East Asia largely functions as a single film and media market, but behind it exists a multifaceted world of coproduction crossing linguistic and national borders. In Coproducing Asia, Stephanie DeBoer guides readers through a rich genealogy of regional film and media coproduction, all the while introducing innovative methods for their examination across decades, locations, and scales of production in East Asia and beyond.

Beginning with the present and moving back in time, Coproducing Asia paints a picture of the assemblages of coproduction in East Asia and their negotiation of Cold War geopolitics and imperial legacies along with the emergence of China as a global market. Addressing wide-screen international romances of the early 1960s, technology transfers of Cold War action cinema, Sino–Japanese “friendship” TV collaborations, Asian omnibus film and video, and more recent China-centered blockbusters, DeBoer deftly contextualizes each case study while accounting for the difficulties involved in the cultural, creative, and industry mediations associated with coproduction.

Based on rarely seen archival research as well as interviews with producers in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Shanghai, Coproducing Asia provides compelling frames for understanding the significance of film and media coproduction in East Asia, making clear that it is not only a site of technological transformation but also an arena for competing senses of regional location and place.

Stephanie DeBoer is assistant professor of film and media studies in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Coproducing Asia is a wonderful book that will have genuine and lasting significance. Stephanie DeBoer has produced a nuanced and practical account of the tensions and difficulties involved not only in the too rarely studied creative and business negotiations enabling a co-production, but also in the asymmetrical cultural investments and historical ‘hauntings’ at stake in such ventures and active in their differing sites of reception. It’s a tour de force.

Meaghan Morris, author of Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture

East Asia functions as a single film market, in many respects, but too few scholars have the acumen to look beyond national borders and linguistic barriers to plumb the depths of this crucial area of inquiry. DeBoer is a welcome exception to the rule.

Gina Marchetti, author of The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens: Race, Sex, and Cinema

A welcome exploration of transnational cinema.

Pacific Affairs

Contents

Introduction: Coproduction and the New East Asia

1. The Bright Asian Market Place: Regional Specters of Connection and Desire
2. Collaboration Decentered: Technology Transfer and the Hong Kong Copy
3. Sino–Japanese Techno-Friendship: Location, Presence, and Memory’s Displacement
4. Tokyo on the Move: Omnibus Asia, Media Capital, and the Limits of the Link
5. Working through China: Scale, Place, and New Asian Coproduction

Conclusion. Scaling the Frame: Genealogies of Coproduction and the Asian Frontier

Acknowledgments
Notes
Filmography
Index