Film and Filmmakers: a Book Spotlight
This week we feature two books dealing with cinema, one a history and the other a memoir.
In Whose Eyes: The Memoir of a Vietnamese Filmmaker in War and Peace (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War)
Văn Thủy Trần with Thanh Dũng Lê (Authors), Wayne Karlin (Editor)
Edited and translated from the original Vietnamese writing of Thanh Dũng Lê, as narrated to him by Trần Văn Thủy, a celebrated Vietnamese filmmaker of more than twenty award-winning documentaries. A cameraman for the People’s Army of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, he went on to achieve international fame as the director of films that address the human costs of the war and its aftermath. – via Amazon
More information / Available via Amazon
Indonesian Cinema after the New Order: Going Mainstream
Thomas Barker
Thomas Barker presents the first systematic and most comprehensive history of contemporary Indonesian cinema. The book focuses on a 20-year period of great upheaval from modest, indie beginnings, through mainstream appeal, to international recognition.
More than a simple narrative, Barker contributes to cultural studies and sociological research by defining the three stages of an industry moving from state administration; through needing to succeed in local pop culture, specifically succeeding with Indonesian youth, to remain financially viable; until it finally realizes international recognition as an art form. This “going mainstream” paradigm reaches far beyond film history and forms a methodology for understanding the market in which all cultural industries operate, where the citizen-consumer (not the state) becomes sovereign. – via Hong Kong University Press