| "Eclipsed Cinemas: Colonial Modernity and Film Cultures in Korea under Japanese Colonial Rule" examines how histories and legacies surrounding Japanese imperialism have been inscribed upon the film histories and film cultures of the East Asian region, focusing particularly on the interactions and reciprocal influences between Japanese and Korean film cultures under Japanese colonial rule. More specifically, it investigates how Japanese imperialism influenced and directed the development and formation of the film cultures in Korea from around 1900 through the early 1930s, with an emphasis on the film culture of the 1920s when film became the major modern culture and thereby fully integrated into the everyday cultural life of the Koreans. While focusing on film exhibition and spectatorship which have been often marginalized in discussions of national and colonial cinemas, this dissertation looks at various aspects of colonial film cultures such as film production, exhibition, reception, policies, and censorship. It additionally considers the various ways in which the unique nature of Japanese imperialism as the sole Asian imperial force---its geographical and cultural proximity to its colonies and its ultimate endeavor to turn its colonies into Japan---shaped the early development of cinema in Korea and East Asia.;As it uncovers a variety of historical issues and questions that have long been ignored or marginalized, "Eclipsed Cinemas" is also concerned with the issue of historiography in relation to the ways in which the legacies of imperialism and nationalism have modified, concealed, exaggerated or "eclipsed" film histories and historical materials. By investigating the cinema's convoluted relation to Korea's colonial modernity and Japanese imperialism and the discursive formations of national and regional film histories and historiographies, this dissertation ultimatley explores the mutually constitutive relationship between early Japanese and Korean film histories. |
