The Transnational Asian Studio System: Cinema, Nation-State, and Globalization in Cold War Asia

This dissertation explores the ways in which postwar East Asian cinema was shaped by the practice of transnational collaborations and competitions between newly independent and still existing colonial states at the height of Cold War cultural politics. More specifically, my aim is to elucidate the extent to which postwar film studios aspired to rationalize and industrialize the system of mass-production by way of co-producing, expanding the market, and co-hosting film festivals. I argue that the emergence of these motion picture studios was the offspring of the Cold War and American hegemony. While providing financial aids to film industries and supporting the cultural elite, U.S. agencies helped to initiate the first postwar inter-Asian film studio network. It is a new attempt to reconstruct East Asian film history. By unveiling these cinematic links, the previously unquestioned history of quintessential national cinema is reassessed. I claim that the concept of national cinema is a fictional construct precariously built upon the denial of the regional cinematic sphere.